Realistic Reconstructions
by john4096
Summary: A series of parodies of Legends of Awesomeness episodes. If you watched the show and found it terrible, or at least wanting, read the humorously improved versions here!
1. Introduction

**Realistic Reconstructions**

Introduction

These stories each roughly follow the "plot" of a particular Legends of Awesomeness episode. However, I have made some substantial changes to both the dialogue and the subtext of these episodes as a means of improving them. Essentially, these are parodies of the original episodes, whose intentions are to poke fun at flaws I've noticed and make the episodes more interesting.

I would like to clarify beforehand that I am a big fan of the Kung Fu Panda movies and the official shorts. They are some of the best pieces of filmmaking I have ever seen. The TV show, however, falls far short in my eyes. If you're a fan of the TV show, you probably won't appreciate these stories. However, if you find them ridiculous like I do or if you like the originals but can handle some humorous criticism against them, read on!

In general, these stories should be readable without seeing the original episode first, but while I can't in good conscience suggesting watching Legends of Awesomeness, they are certainly funnier if you're familiar with the source material.

If I get a lot of positive feedback on these, I might very well write more of them, so if you like them and find them funny, please leave a review! Some episodes I had in mind were "The Midnight Stranger" and "Chain Reaction", but I might take suggestions too.


	2. Bride of Po

**Bride of Po**

"You ready to do this?" Monkey taunted, lowering into a battle stance.

"Oh I was born ready!" Po replied. "Although, if I'm honest, I was hoping for something a little more hardcore from you than tha—ah!"

Po teetered sideways off his stilts, desperately overcorrecting to avoid crashing to the ground.

"One sec!" he called, flailing violently. "Almost got it!"

"Well at least the writers got your clumsiness right," Monkey remarked resignedly.

"Shh!" Po hissed. "No time to talk! It's time for stilt-fu!"

"Silt-fu? Really?" Monkey asked skeptically. "I guess that's…sort of Po-ish."

"Enough talk!" Po shouted. "Fight!"

Still a little unstable despite their constant and rigorous Kung Fu training—which, among many other things, teaches such subtle skills as balance and poise—the warriors set awkwardly to their battle, trading blows back and forth before Po fell ungracefully to the ground.

"Unguarded moment!" Monkey called.

"Seriously, who writes your lines?" Po asked distractedly.

This did nothing to stop Monkey's totally professional and not at all childlike or uncoordinated slapping.

As though only just realizing he was capable of moving in spite of his attacker's best efforts to neutralize the muscles in his armpits, Po lashed out sideways against his adversary's stilts, sending him crashing to the ground as well. Not to be outdone, Monkey retuned with several potentially humorous blows to the head.

Po had had enough at this point, his frustration filling his entire body and giving him the strength to return effortlessly to his stilts through the loophole provided to him by being a character in a children's TV show. Mounted again, the accomplished Dragon Warrior proceeded to stumble around some more, because staying on a pair of stilts is harder than magically getting on them in the first place.

His antics were to be short-lived, however, as Monkey returned to his stilts as well, doing so off-camera to prevent raising any further questions. Po flipped backwards, not coordinated enough to stand still on his stilts but more than capable of rotating his entire body 360º in the air and landing back on said stilts without problem. As he landed, however, the weight of his body drove his stilts into the earth, anchoring them.

Not seeing this, Monkey struck anyway, his own stilt sending a painful vibration through his leg as it collided forcefully with his opponent's rooted shaft.

"I call that 'Pillars of the Ouch,'" Po called cockily, for the TV series Po knows not of humility.

"Gooooooood Naaaaammeee!" Monkey answered, his voice shaking with his leg, which was clearly disrupting his judgement abilities.

"Woah, woah, woah, woah, woah! Hey you two!"

Mr. Ping came walking out of the noodle shop, his face one of…something. Does his face ever change in the TV series?

"You're supposed to be stilt-walking ads for my shop!" he exclaimed, tactfully glossing over the explanation of how stilts were in any way an effective means of advertising to people. "I'm not paying you to mess around!"

"You're not paying us at all," Po pointed out. "Also, you used to love me in the movies."

"Good thing too," the goose replied.

"I'm still not sure how guys on stilts help advertise noodles," Monkey pointed out, the one voice of reason in a sea of stupidity.

"It's how the restaurant business works!" Mr. Ping insisted. "I know that's not an answer, but a real explanation would require more thought on the part of the writers. Now, stilt walk, you Monkey!"

The goose proceeded to throw each of the warriors a wooden sign before returning again to his noodle shop, presumably so James Hong could lament the downfall of a character he cared so dearly about.

Po stood confused for a moment, wondering why on earth two of the greatest Kung Fu warriors in all of China had been assigned the menial task of running ads for a noodle shop, but then he realized that it was probably an excuse for the writers to bring the stilt-walking thing up again later in the episode to appear as though they actually had a plan.

Satisfied with that explanation, he proceeded to fruitlessly pull at his stilts, unable to remove them from the ground despite the extreme strength he is supposed to posses as the Dragon Warrior.

"Well, I may be stuck here," he said finally, "but at least I've got a nice view!"

He began looking around him, calling out what he saw with a sense of wonder unusual for someone who had lived in the Valley of Peace their entire life.

"There's the Jade Palace," he noted astutely, "and the bamboo forest, and a cute girl—"

"You mean Tigress?" Monkey asked, suddenly interested.

"Nah, the producers don't let me talk about Tigress like that," Po dismissed. "They probably think it would ruin all of their 'everyone thinks Tigress is a guy even though she's a famous and well-known Kung Fu master' shtick."

"Oh, right," Monkey nodded understandingly.

"They also think it would be shallow, kind of like my TV personality. Anyway," Po continued, "Cute girl, and an old guy, and some bandits…"

The two masters looked at each other, their eyes wide in shock. One might almost believe that they were legitimately surprised at finding bandits in the Valley of Peace yet again.

"Bandits!"

And so, the Dragon Warrior and his sidekick of the week sprang into action, pouncing to the ground behind the burly bandits just as they began to accost the innocent goats they had surrounded.

"Please, we have no valuables," the old man pleaded.

"Oh yeah?" the bandit asked, knowing that there was approximately a 65% chance of any given character in this series possessing a key plot device. "Then what's this?"

He made to grab a locket that hung from the younger man's—I mean, the "cute" girl's neck—only to have his hand slapped away.

"Don't touch that!" she demanded, only confirming that it was indeed a convenient plot device in disguise.

"You heard the lady!" Po called, announcing his presence in a way that actually felt in character for once. Then, more typically for the show, "Wow, she's even cuter close up!"

Seeing some of the fiercest warriors in all of China standing before them, the abysmally small group of bandits decided their best option was to fight. Thus began a typical fight sequence that will go down in history as something that happened but wasn't even worth parodying—but then, the unexpected happened!

The goat girl, somehow cornered by two bandits despite Po and Monkey having already dispatched more of them than were originally there, jumped into the air. She kicked and punched and threw her attackers to the ground, leaving everyone wondering why she had waited until now to do so.

"Woah!" Monkey exclaimed. "Flying goat surprise!"

"What are you talking about?" Po asked dubiously. "Everyone in this show can do Kung Fu. It's practically a law."

"I know," Monkey conceded, "but the law demands that we be surprised anyway."

"Man, cute and knows Kung Fu!" Po breathed in disbelief, ironically unaware that the first half of his sentence was much harder to swallow than the second.

"A little," the goat girl admitted, brushing her hand against her shirt. "Don't mess with the goat girl…Seriously! DON'T!"

"Woah, woah!" Po defended, backing away slightly. "I'm not a bad—"

"I'm just kidding," the girl said, punching him playfully before grabbing him by the chest somehow. "No I'm not!"

Taken by surprise despite, once again, his extensive training, Po found himself being flipped over and flung forcefully to the ground, landing hard on his back.

"Mess with the goat, you get the hooves!" the man—uh, girl—called out proudly, making her even more unlikeable than before. She then proceeded to kick and punch the air in apparent demonstration. By her expression, it was clear she thought it looked impressive.

As the goat moved in slow motion before him, Po watch in a daze, forgetting that he could get his ass kicked in a similar manner any time he wanted just by so much as looking at the TV show version of Tigress. Then, much more quickly than she had come, the goat girl disappeared, making no mention of the old man in the process. The viewers can only assume he was killed.

"Are you alright?" Monkey asked suddenly, snapping Po out of his daze with another one of his totally professional Kung Fu slaps to the face.

The panda stood excitedly, regaling Monkey with various sensations he was experiencing such that no doubt could be left as to his infatuation with the goat man—I mean, cute girl.

"My palms are sweaty, my heart is racing, and I feel tingly all over!" he exclaimed. "I think she got me with the cloven-hooved exploding-head technique."

"Uh, cloven-hooved exploding-head technique actually explodes your head," Monkey explained, scratching his head. "I think maybe you're…in love!"

"Monkey, we have got to talk about what happened to your voice since the first movie," Po said flatly. "I don't want to say you sound gay, because that would perpetuate a negative stereotype, but since this show is going to use one later anyway, I'm going to have to say it: you sound gay."

"You're the one who fell in love with a goat man you just met," Monkey replied snidely.

"Fair point," Po conceded. "I'm going to pretend I'm surprised at your suggestion anyway, though, because that's standard procedure for romance in a kids' TV show."

"Go ahead," Monkey said graciously.

"Love? Pfft! No way!" Po denied unconvincingly. "Not this pa…"

He trailed off, making quite a strange noise as the goat girl appeared again suddenly and without explanation, probably in the hopes of achieving some sort of comedic effect.

"I may sound gay," Monkey began, "but you're fully having an orgasm right now."

"Did my head just explode?" Po asked worriedly. "I can't feel my face! Oh wait, there it is…"

"My daughter and I can't thank you enough for helping us in our time of need," the old goat man said, also appearing out of nowhere. "Even though she evidently knows Kung Fu and your assistance was in no way needed."

"I know, right?" Po said. "Talk about a convenient twist. Next thing you'll be telling me she's getting married tomorrow or something."

"Actually, yes," the goat man—the older one—replied.

Po looked distraught briefly before saying, "I'm going to speed things up a bit here and guess that the next plot twist is that she's getting married to me."

"Well, I've never even met him yet," the goat man—the younger one—admitted. "I'm pretty stoked about it though! He's called 'The Dragon Warrior'!"

"Wait," Monkey said, "You're supposed to be a big Kung Fu fan but you don't know what the Dragon Warrior looks like? That's oddly convenient."

"Normally I'd say something only funny to five year olds here before changing to the next scene," Po said, "but let's just skip it this time."

* * *

"We arranged the marriage years ago, Po," Mr. Ping explained, leaving out the important question of why he never bothered to tell his nearly thirty-year-old son this at some point. "You and Luxi (?) were just babies."

"Kind of a big deal," Po pointed out needlessly. "Seems like something a guy _tells his son_."

"Money was tight and dishes were expensive," the goose went on, avoiding the more important question in favour of one that was never asked. "Lushy's (?) father offered to keep me stocked with plates if I agreed that you would marry his daughter."

"So you traded him for plates?" Monkey asked incredulously.

"And bowls," Mr. Ping added, reminding us again that he doesn't care in slightest about his son in this series. "But don't worry: if Po were to actually get married, they'd have to keep the goat girl around for all the future episodes, so something is inevitably going to go wrong and I'll get to keep my plates and my son!" That explanation certainly made more sense.

The goose proceeded to rub Po on the shoulder in a way that might have seemed affectionate if it weren't for the words that followed it.

"That's how the restaurant business works," he said, leaving before anyone could force him to answer a relevant question.

"Luche (?), give Po his present," the old goat man pressed.

"Yes sir," she said. "Po, I understand that you like action figures."

"Yeah, ha, well I did," the panda laughed, acting casual. "You know, when I was a kid—a loooong time ago! Not really—ooh!"

He stopped short as the goat girl held up a small Shifu figurine before his face.

"I collect them too," she explained.

"That's _also_ convenient!" Monkey yelled, but Po failed to hear him.

"Is that a…_Master Shifu_?" Po asked in disbelief, despite the fact that it clearly couldn't have been anyone else and recognizing Kung Fu-related memorabilia was supposed to be his strong suit.

"The monobrow variant!" the goat girl corrected.

"That's the rarest one there is!" Po shouted excitedly. "Even though you could easily just draw the monobrow on a regular Shifu figure!"

"It's yours now!" the goat girl said. "Or ours, if you want to go through with the whole marriage thing."

"Wait, wait, wait!" Po insisted. "Just to be clear: you're pretty, funny, good at Kung Fu, you love dumplings, and you collect action figures?"

"No. No. Somewhat. Who doesn't. And yes?" the girl answered uncertainly.

* * *

Po burst open the doors to the training courtyard, throwing his arms open with glee as he made his great announcement.

"I'm getting married!" he called out proudly.

The Furious Five and Shifu, having clearly been aware that Po would be away to stand on stilts and hold signs for no apparent reason, turned to stare at him in shock. As they did so, a bamboo staff came down on Shifu's head. No one is sure why.

"You're kidding, right?" Viper asked, deciding to avoid being her usual supportive self.

"Meet the future Mrs. Dragon Warrior!" Po Ping said in answer, clearly not understanding how last names work. Or titles.

"Hey there, Furious Five," the goat man—uh, girl—waved. "Worship you—totally trying not to spaz!"

"I know it's a little sudden," Po conceded.

"Except for the 'it was arranged from when we were babies part,'" the goat added.

"Well, I was going to say that our entire lives revolve around me making bad decisions on a whim in this TV series," Po said, "but that works too."

"Okay, now I'm spazzing," the goat girl admitted despite seeming reasonably calm compared to earlier. "Would it be weird to ask you to sign my belly?"

"Definitely, yes," Shifu should have said.

"Is this a joke?" Mantis asked, clearly wondering why Po wanted to marry a goat man.

"No joke," Monkey confirmed.

"Well, looks like somebody gets to plan a wedding!" Crane said. "Can it be me? Please say yes!"

"Go crazy!" Po agreed. "Also, Monkey, I stand corrected. Your voice is fine."

Crane flew away in a hurry, leaving only one warrior who had yet to make a sarcastic remark.

"Oh, Luchi (?)," Po said, acting as though he had only just remembered that Tigress existed even though they've clearly been wanting to get into each other's pants for ages now. "I'd like you to meet—"

"Master Tigress!" the goat girl exclaimed. Apparently she could recognize a famous tiger but not a famous panda. "I'm an incredible mega-fan!" she said, after a bunch of unintelligible nonsense. "It's, like, such an honour—"

"Hang on," Tigress interrupted. "I need to fill my daily sarcasm quota even though I've never said one sarcastic thing in any of the actual movies."

"Go ahead!" the goat man—uh, girl—obliged.

"You," she said, pointing at the goat, "want to marry _him_? Really?"

"Yeah, because _he's_ the unattractive one in this couple," Mantis observed dryly, demonstrating how sarcasm is supposed to be done—that is, if he had actually said that.

"Woah, Tigress!" Po said as though surprised. "Never pegged you for the jealous type!"

"I'm not really," Tigress answered seriously. "But in this TV show I'm anything the writers need me to be. Besides, there was an entire episode that revolved solely around me being uncharacteristically jealous and petty towards you because you were somehow better than me at—you know what? Fine. I'll play along. I'm not jealous."

"Po," Shifu interrupted, "a word."

As the Dragon Warrior ran after Shifu in a manner that looked almost as ridiculous as that one time that clam had a sword fight somehow, Tigress looked threateningly at the goat man.

"I'll be watching you," she said, because TV show Tigress suspects everything is a secret plot and yet is somehow always taken by surprise when she's right and then has her ass promptly kicked.

"Okay," the goat replied, attempting to comically miss the point but succeeding only in coming off as depressingly out of touch with reality. "I'll try not to look all odd!"

"You know," Tigress began thoughtfully, "if I'm going to be horribly out of character anyway, it might be worth just eating you right here and now. At least that would end everyone's suffering."

"Nah, I wouldn't recommend it," goat man—uh, goat girl—said. "I taste worse than I look."

"That's hard to believe," Mantis intoned, once again demonstrating how jokes are supposed to work—or he would have, if that line had actually been said.

* * *

"Po," Shifu began, "getting married is a big step, and—"

"Um, no offence Shifu," Po said, cutting the old master off, "but can we skip the part where you try to sound wise and jump straight to the part where you tell me that my actions have somehow had implausibly large consequences?"

"Uh…I suppose so," Shifu said. "Basically, if you marry that man, he'll be in great danger since you're the Dragon Warrior."

"How?" Po asked. "She'd be just as safe as my dad living in the Valley, which—okay—isn't very safe it seems, but I mean…it's not like we can't protect her just like everyone else. In fact, if she stayed at the Jade Palace with us, she'd be safer than anyone in China."

"That's true, Po," Shifu admitted. "But this TV series hinges on everything falling to crap because of a poorly-made decision of yours only for you to magically fix it later via some combination of Ass Pulls and the Deus Ex Machina."

"Good point," Po agreed.

"So, while there is no logical explanation as to why marrying someone would cause a problem in any way, or as to why you would be unable to use the Kung Fu skills you developed because of your marriage, this still counts as a poorly-made decision and so it must carry with it severe consequences."

"Poorly-made?" Po asked. "Because I hardly know her but I'm marrying her anyway?"

"I was going to say because Tigress is clearly a better choice, but that works too," Shifu answered.

"So what are these consequences?" Po wondered aloud.

"If you marry that goat man-girl, you will have to step down as the Dragon Warrior," Shifu explained grimly.

"Doesn't that go against everything the Dragon Warrior represents?" Po questioned. "I mean, aren't I the Dragon Warrior because of who I am and as such can't not be the Dragon Warrior anymore?"

"It was the only thing the writers could think of," Shifu explained.

"Gotcha," Po said. "So, why the goat man instead of Tigress anyway?"

"It doesn't mesh with the sarcastic and overly mean personality they want to assign to her, I think," Shifu reasoned. "Plus, by having the goat never appear again after this episode, they can put even less effort into continuity than they do already."

"That's a lame excuse," Po scoffed. "I mean, Tigress does a better job of beating me up than the goat man, she's actually my friend in the movies, and she's even attractive in a way that makes both men and women question their sexuality."

"So she is," Shifu said, "but we can't change the writers' minds. You're just going to have to pretend to struggle with this decision between an annoying girl you just met and your life dream until you ultimately make the wrong decision and change back to the right decision later on."

"But what's the point of having this awesome life if I've got no one to share it with?" Po asked.

Shifu blinked. "Did you forget the whole Tigress thing we just discussed? Or the other members of the Furious Five, whom you've become close friends with? Or myself? Or your father?"

"Shh, I'm playing along with it," Po said.

"I see. Well, you need to make up your own mind," Shifu said unhelpfully. "Even though I'm like a second father figure to you and a spiritual leader, I am unable to provide even the slightest bit of advice to you or it would quickly become apparent how few reasons you have for staying with the random goat you just met."

With that, the old red panda left the hall of heroes, and Po looked down at his feet in sad contemplation.

* * *

"This scene is boring, can we skip it?" goat girl asked.

"Huh?" Po said, coming out of his reverie. "Oh, yeah, sure."

"Oh, but don't forget the important hinting that the old goat man is secretly evil," she reminded him.

"Really, no one will be surprised," Po said. "Someone turns out to be evil every episode, and it's always one of the new characters. There is no need to foreshadow it in any way, shape, or form."

* * *

"So he's going through with the wedding for sure?" Mantis asked.

"Not for sure, but don't tell Crane," Monkey explained in a hushed voice. "You'll crush his dream that he's had only for this episode for the sake of trying to introduce a funny character quirk that makes no sense."

"No, no, no!" Crane said, appearing out of nowhere to reprimand them on their flower arrangements. As a result of his haste, the lattice fell on several unnamed pigs.

"You might want to reinforce that lattice," Monkey said.

"What does that even mean?" Crane pointed out. "It just stands up by the way it's shaped. You can't reinforce it. Even this joke makes no sense."

"Man, this scene is boring too," Monkey observed.

"They all are," Mantis explained solemnly. "The only good ones usually have Tigress in them."

"Speaking of Tigress, why isn't she making a bigger deal about this?" Crane asked. "I mean, she's kind of Po's confidant and closest friend and she hasn't said a single thing to him yet about suddenly getting married to a random goat man."

"You're thinking of the deep, complex, interesting movie Tigress," Monkey corrected. "TV show Tigress just gets mad at things and has stuff fall on her for laughs."

* * *

"Okay, I've decided," Po said determinedly. "I'm marrying Lewshi (?)!"

"I'm proud of you panda," Shifu said. "Despite the fact that calling you 'panda' is something I was only supposed to have done in the first film to show my lack of respect for you, I wish you nothing but happiness. And now, I will leave so you can look sadly into the pool to reflect on how bad a decision you're making and we can reveal that Tigress has been eavesdropping this whole time even though nobody was fooled by her casual sweeping."

Once again, the red panda exited the Hall of Heroes. As he did so, Tigress stood sweeping in the background, turning at the last moment to reveal an unhappy expression that was supposed to leave the viewers wondering what she was thinking but instead left them wondering why a highly-skilled Kung Fu master was sweeping the floors instead of one of the many servants employed by the Jade Palace.

* * *

"Po must really love you to give up being Dragon Warrior," Tigress said sarcastically, confronting the goat girl when she really should have been talking to Po—you know, as friends are wont to do when they're concerned. "I guess you must really love him too."

"I…care for Po," the goat responded carefully, even though the correct response when you're trying to cover something up is to lie.

"Care for him?" Tigress probed, "Or using him?"

"That doesn't really make syntactic sense, you know," goat girl pointed out.

"The hormones I'm forced to ingest intravenously for the sake of advancing the plot when it's convenient mess with my speech patterns," Tigress explained.

As though demonstrating, she narrowed her eyes and used an overly dramatic punch to knock the totally inconspicuous locket from earlier to the ground, which of course opened to reveal a picture of yet another goat man.

"It's not what you—"

The goat didn't finish her sentence, hip-butting Tigress away suddenly. How a small goat managed to move over five-hundred pounds of tiger muscle so easily will never be understood.

She lowered into a battle stance. "Tigress, I don't want to hurt you, but I'm going to fight you anyway despite the fact that having a picture of what turns out to be my brother around my neck isn't actually incriminating and so doesn't warrant this kind of reaction."

"Trust me," Tigress reassured her. "You won't hurt me."

Had this been the movie Tigress, this line would have been all too true, but the TV Tigress's record doesn't really support such a statement.

"Tigress stop!" Po yelled, suddenly appearing on the scene. Yes, this is also convenient.

"Stay out of this, panda," Tigress said, despite the fact that she has literally never addressed him that way in the movies. "This is how girls discuss things."

"Wow, well at least now I don't feel as bad about the gay stereotype from earlier," Po said. "Kind of cheapens your character though, don't you think?"

"And falling in love with a shrimp didn't?" Tigress asked.

"Good point," Po conceded.

"Actually, no," Tigress said, standing up. "This is ridiculous. You're saying that it's okay for me to fall in love with a shrimp who is completely and utterly unlikeable for absolutely no reason, but I'm not allowed to be even remotely nice to the guy who's my best friend and confidant?"

"You're only allowed to admit to having feelings when it's convenient for the writers," Po reminded her. "Just like how I'm afraid of you whenever it's convenient even though, in the world of this TV show, I'm actually stronger than you in every way and thus have no reason to be."

"But this isn't fair!" Tigress complained. "I'm cooler, more interesting, and more attractive! And even though I'm a bitch in this series, people actually like me! No one cares about this goat man."

"_I_ care about this goat man—uh, girl," Po said. "At least, I have to pretend I do. Now, Tigress, I know you've cried your little eyes out that you and I aren't together…"

"Wait, what?" Tigress asked, genuinely surprised this time. "Since when do you talk to me like that?"

"Have you not been paying attention?" Po asked patronizingly. "My entire _raison d'être _in this show is to be cocky and annoying. Now, look: I can still see a tear right—woah, uh…do you ever blink?"

"About as often as I smile," Tigress answered, "which is very often in this TV show and in the movies, but the writers still make jokes about how I never do it anyway."

"Wow, that's like, basic continuity," Po observed.

"Yeah," Tigress recounted, "I once said with a blank face that that's how I look when I smile only to be smiling in full in the next scene."

"Man, no wonder you're so bitchy in this series," Po said, realization dawning on him. "It must be tiring having your entire personality change like ten times an episode. That and all the getting your ass kicked that happens."

"Has everyone forgotten about me?" the goat girl asked. The answer was yes, and if not, they certainly would by the end of the episode.

"I guess this is the part where I walk away without giving you even the slightest chance to explain to me what upset you so much that you resorted to using physical violence against the goat I'm marrying—which, you know, could potentially be very important information, but which would ruin the not-so-careful setup for the big twist later on."

"Wait, you're leaving now?" Tigress asked. "But our conversations are the best parts of these crappy shows!"

"Lazy writing waits for no panda," Po explained, leaving Tigress looking sad—instead of angry, which is how one should feel when their best friend insults them in favour of an ugly goat man that is clearly using them for a lame yet devious plot.

* * *

"Nice job fixing the lattice, Crane," Monkey said.

"Thanks, I reinforced it like you said," Crane replied. "Still don't know what that means because literally nothing has changed about it and it's still going to fall down again later."

As Crane and Shifu proceeded to hold a conversation that could have been entirely left out and no one would've missed it, Po looked over his traditional dress for the ceremony, smoothing out non-existent wrinkles.

"Po," Tigress said, appearing suddenly as characters in this series are wont to do. "I—"

"Don't make a scene, Tigress," Po interrupted, unperturbed by her sudden appearance and being infuriatingly annoying even by TV Po standards. "I've made my decision—kind of—and it's the right one—possibly."

"Wow, that last line actually sounded like you and was somewhat funny," Tigress admitted grudgingly. "Anyway, I just wanted to say that…you were right."

"You _are_ jealous!" Po exclaimed, looking positively ecstatic about this development, which leaves one wondering why he was marrying the random goat if he had been so desperately hoping that Tigress wanted him as well. Then again, everyone had already gotten tired of trying to rationalize that particular decision by now.

"Of course I am," Tigress should have said instead of the crap she spews in reality. "You're my first real friend since I left the orphanage—the first person to really get to know me and treat me as if you aren't afraid of me. Not to mention the fact that I'm your favourite Kung Fu warrior ever and someone you've been training with for at least a few months by this point, so there's no possible way you would feel more devoted to this random goat man than to me."

Po look surprised at how well-reason this was—or would have, had Tigress actually said it.

"But for the purposes of this show, I'm just going to say that it's your life and I'm happy for you," she actually said, to everyone's dismay. "I'm going to say that you're my friend, and then completely let the whole 'your fiancé is using you' thing slide, because that's what friends in this universe do."

"Thanks, Tigress," Po said, smiling.

And so, the wedding ceremony continued, strained and forced emotions running high. Mr. Ping cried despite having set this whole thing up ages ago, Tigress looked like she was holding in a fart, and goat girl continued to look ugly as hell. Before Po could give the final, "I do," however, which isn't actually part of a traditional ancient Chinese wedding (if I recall correctly), the goat man turned out to actually be the evil fox guy whose name I don't care enough about to remember. In case you're wondering, it is never revealed what happened to Lewshee's (?) real father.

As usual, the Furious Five sprang immediately into action, fighting briefly before being swiftly immobilized by something, well…convenient. There was then some kind of dialogue that was meant to be emotional but instead was merely tiring and then Po went to save the goat he claimed to love but honestly didn't at all.

* * *

The goat man—the bearded one, who was actually much more attractive than the one Po had nearly married—hung precariously from the tree branch, completely helpless. His sister cried out to him, demanding that the evil fox let him go. Though her actions implied that he was her boyfriend, the series never pairs people of the same species together, so he was obviously her brother. The fox, of course, refused to yield to her demands, wanting the Dragon Warrior to arrive so he may…um…it's actually not clear how this plot was supposed to in any way benefit the fox.

At any rate, as all began to appear lost for the poor attractive ram, Po arrived on the scene, to the surprise of no one. He effortlessly fended off the two ambiguous cat bandits guarding his fiancé despite being absolutely useless only moments earlier before turning to the fox and demanding that he let the ram go, which the fox obliged to by throwing an axe and sending the ram teetering on the precipice. What his actions did not explain was how killing the ram would benefit anyone in any way at this point.

And so the esteemed Dragon Warrior and the random fox adversary engaged in an epic battle involving the stilts from earlier, fruitlessly trying to convince the viewers that the writers had a plan of some sort. Po quickly defeated his opponent just in time to rescue the ram from certain death—of course.

"Wow, your muscles are very defined," Po commented. "Your chest is almost as strong and manly as Tigress's, which I would know because I've felt her up gratuitously on multiple occasions throughout this series."

"Thanks," the ram replied in a deep and sultry tone. "I don't even work out."

Po narrowed his eyelids. "I hate you for having a line that's actually sort of funny."

"Well, it's a good thing your bamboo stilt doesn't burn for some reason," the ram pointed out.

"No it isn't," Po argued. "That would make more sense than the actual reason I almost die just now."

Po threw the ram to safety as his stilt, having somehow changed position from being on level ground to being on a hot rock (but still not burning), began teetering back and forth hopelessly, ultimately sending Po falling towards the coals below. All began to seem lost yet again until an orange blur shot out of the darkness, catching him at the last second.

"Tigress!" Po called, looking up at his saviour, who was carrying him in her arms like a firefighter might. "Uh…you know your left hand is up my ass, right?"

"Shh," Tigress hissed. "I managed to get free. Just in time by the looks of it."

"Wait, if you got free, how come none of the others came too?" Po asked reasonably.

"They needed an excuse for a romantic moment between us so I could shoot it down shortly afterwards with my uncharacteristic sarcasm," Tigress explained. "Even though this would be a great opportunity to point out that I'm a true friend and am always there looking out for you whereas this goat girl is just annoying."

"You're never going to give up on us, are you?" Po poked.

"I—wait," Tigress said, shaking her head. "So you can feel me up regularly and hit on me in an episode, and I can be overtly jealous and break free to come rescue you and carry you _like this_, but we still can't actually get together?"

"No," Po said unhappily.

She dropped him roughly on the ground and walked away. "I quit."

"Well, I guess this is the part where you reveal that this guy's your brother and then suggest that we gradually build a relationship with each other before getting married so that we can claim this story actually had some sort of moral," Po said, addressing the ugly goat man (as opposed to the attractive one).

"Frankly, there's no way I'm ever going to be seen again ever," the goat girl admitted. "So there's no need to pretend."

"Thank God," Tigress sighed.

"Tigress, I know you're more interesting to talk to, but goat girl and I are obliged to have a moment together right now," Po explained. "Can you go be uncomfortably sexy but also uncharacteristically sarcastic elsewhere?"

"Come on, I don't think I even get a single line in the next five episodes," Tigress complained. "And I'm objectively the most interesting character—even the hormonal schoolgirl version of me."

"We know," Po said. "No need to rub it in."

"Well, I'm not sure where to go from here," the goat girl said.

"Literally anywhere is fine," Po answered. "Nobody actually cares what you do."

He looked thoughtful for a moment.

"You know what?" he said finally, "Screw this noise. Tigress, want to get married?"

"Anything if it means I don't have to have romantic fantasies with a shrimp anymore," Tigress replied.

"Sweet!" Po exclaimed. "Later, losers! I'm getting married to someone who is _actually_ pretty, funny, knows Kung Fu, likes dumplings, and collects action figures!"

"I don't collect action figures," Tigress corrected.

"We'll pretend Mantis is an action figure," Po said in a hushed voice. "That way the writers have no excuse to keep us apart."

"Well, I guess that's that," Tigress said. "The evil fox guy kidnapped the goat girl's brother and then pretended to be her father to blackmail her into marrying you—even though she was technically supposed to marry you anyway and so didn't need blackmailing—in the hopes that Po would step down as the Dragon Warrior, even though that wouldn't make his Kung Fu skills or the rest of the warriors at the Jade Palace magically disappear or anything. He then went on to reveal that he's not the goat's father after all and proceeded to try to kill her brother anyway, making the entire ruse up until that point unnecessary. All of this was done to try to lure Po out to rescue the ram—which Po would have done anyway since it's his job to save people in need of help regardless of whether or not a love interest is present—at which point he would fight one-on-one with Po so that, uh…something…and once again the Dragon Warrior saved the day by sheer luck!"

"Sounds right to me," Po said, slapping Tigress on the back. "All we need now is for something to fall on you comically and we've finished another substandard episode!"

And so, as a tree came out of nowhere for the sheer purpose of crushing Tigress in a way that was neither humorous nor respectful to the character she represented, the end credits rolled and viewers everywhere let out a sigh of relief.


	3. The Way of the Prawn

**The Way of the Prawn**

_A/N: Please note that, in order to write this parody, I had to re-watch the entirety of "The Way of the Prawn" from start to finish. I even had to watch some parts multiple times. If you enjoy this story, please reward my suffering with a review._

* * *

Po and Crane walked side-by-side through the forest, the former pretending to play an instrument. Indeed, a tune was heard, but it in no way coordinated with the panda's movements.

"Okay, Craniac, name that folk song!" Po challenged.

"Po, I told you I don't want to play," Crane responded, because in this TV series no one is friends with Po in any way—possibly as a result of his insufferable cockiness and boundless stupidity.

"Aww," Po whined, "but guarding an imperial payroll is so boring!"

"The TV show version of you finds everything boring," Crane pointed out, "even though being a Kung Fu master was your lifelong dream and the movie version of you finds basically everything exciting."

"Well sometimes a guy gets tired of making the exact same mistake over and over again without any kind of character development whatsoever," Po defended. "Plus, Tigress isn't in this scene, so that automatically reduces its excitement factor by half."

"That's true," Crane conceded.

"Now come on," Po pleaded. "Just one guess! Please?"

"I have no idea," Crane answered.

"Wrong!" Po exclaimed. "The answer is _The Happy Pole Carrying Song_!"

"I would be devastatingly surprised if that turned out to be a real thing," Crane should have said.

"Because it's a stupid name?" Po asked.

"No, because it would mean the writers did research," Crane replied.

"Well, you're wrong anyway," Po said, unperturbed. "Point Po! Time for round two!"

As Po began to pretend to play a new song, Crane heard rustling noises behind him and turned to assess the situation.

"What was that?" he asked concernedly.

"It's called the bok choy boathouse," Po responded. "Man, you stink at this!"

"Po, we need to focus!" Crane insisted. "You heard Shifu! This path has been plagued by a bandit that strikes like lightning and leaves carnage in its wake!"

"Well thanks for so eloquently explaining the situation, Crane," Po said sarcastically, "but we both know that, if this bandit were really such a big deal, Shifu wouldn't have only sent two of us."

"Actually, that is kind of odd, now that you mention it," Crane said thoughtfully. "Also, how long did this go on before we decided to start, you know, doing something about it?"

"One of life's great mysteries," Po shrugged. "Like why you're here instead of Tigress."

"Hey!" Crane started, sounding offended. "Are you saying I'm not as interesting a companion as…okay, yeah, that is weird."

"Look, don't worry about it," Po said reassuringly. "My awesomeness is more than enough to scare away any bandits."

"You know, I'm having a hard time figuring out exactly what two-second clip of the original movie the writers of this show watched to get the impression that you're so infuriatingly cocky," Crane said.

"Pfft," Po scoffed. "The writers of this show never watched the movie! If they did, Tigress wouldn't be such a bitch, I would actually be likeable, and this fight scene coming up wouldn't be so embarrassingly stupid."

Suddenly, as though anyone would still be surprised after the rustling sound earlier and Po's cocky retort, something struck one of the goats the warriors were supposed to be protecting.

"It's an ambush!" Crane said. By the tone of his voice, it was clear that he wasn't surprised either.

Crane walked forward, smartly placing himself in the exact spot where the goat had been moments earlier to ensure that he too would be taken down in one fell swoop. This tactical manoeuvre left Po free to fight the attacker one-on-one.

As quickly as he had downed the first goat and the accomplished Kung Fu master that Crane was supposed to be but clearly wasn't, the attacker did…something to the other goats that caused them to fly up and disappear completely. This made the chest of gold fall over to reveal such a small number of coins that it left viewers everywhere wondering why four people were needed to carry it. The attacker quickly concealed this damning evidence, however, by snatching it up in a flash.

"Okay, unseen wise-guy," Po said in a manner that was supposed to feel intimidating. "You just got on the wrong side of the Dragon Warrior!"

"Dragon Warrior?" a clearly Japanese voice called out. "I've heard of your power, but your skills are no match for mine!"

"Pfft, every villain says that," Po said with an unimpressed air. "Also, why are you Japanese? The whole point of this franchise is to highlight ancient Chinese culture. Bringing a Japanese character in just makes the whole thing less magical."

"If you think that's confusing, just wait!" the attacker returned, jumping out of the forest and landing most anticlimactically in front of Po.

"Uh…a clam?" Po asked uncertainly. "An animal that can't survive out of the water, has no arms or appendages of any kind, probably weighs next to nothing, and could easily be killed with a bit of salt? That's what the writers came up with for their big bad villain? No wonder we never see you again after this episode."

The clam didn't respond, instead simply staring at Po, who stared back blankly. This staring went on for such an exorbitant amount of time that one might think they were watching a Twilight film.

Appropriately, the long staring session was immediately followed by a series of terrible puns on the words "clam" and "clan," which also went on for an unnecessarily long time. Depressingly, this was not the least interesting part of the episode.

"Ha, clam clan!" Po laughed. "That's hilarious!"

"It is?" Crane asked skeptically. "Has the cocky part of your brain grown too large and absorbed the part responsible for your sense of humour?"

Apparently Crane was alone in his realization that no pun had ever actually made anyone laugh, however, as the onlookers began to chuckle along with Po. As they laughed, the sound of their mirth mixed with the faint hiss of their voice actors' souls being slowly crushed.

Clearly angered by this affront to comedy, the clam leapt quickly into action, attacking Po from all directions. His fighting style very much resembled that of Mantis from the first movie, except for a few important differences: Mantis had hands with which to grab and throw things; Mantis had legs with which to move; and, at that time, Po had only just begun training. I would say this was an intentional homage, but for that to be true, the writers would've had to have actually watched the first movie, which would contradict the mounds of evidence to the contrary.

At this point, an intelligent viewer might point out that, even if the clam were somehow capable of running and jumping and grabbing and throwing and kicking and punching, and even if he were truly more skilled than Po, there was no reason an accomplished Kung Fu master such as the Dragon Warrior would fail to block even a single blow or put up even the mildest of fights. That said, most viewers—intelligent or otherwise—were probably too busy recovering from the earlier pun to notice.

Finally, after a few more implausible attacks, the clam stood atop its defeated opponent proudly, turning to the small audience before it.

"Remember me, all of you!" he said threateningly.

The clam then proceeding to fly off into the sky, which is about equally as believable as the rest of the clam's abilities so far anyway.

Defeated and humiliated, Po lay sadly on the ground as the sky darkened overhead and rain began to fall, implying that a great deal of time had passed. Apparently, not one person had moved in the slightest during this period.

"Well," Crane said, "on the bright side, this is still less embarrassing than that time you nearly married an ugly goat man you just met."

* * *

Po and his sidekick of the week walked self-consciously through the village, returning from their humiliating, underwhelming, and illogical defeat. As they walked, various village members pointed out how pathetic it was for them to be defeated by something with no arms or legs. While it normally wouldn't make sense for the villagers to be so rude to the warriors that had selflessly defended their valley for years, they did have a good point this time.

"Don't worry," Crane said. "I'm sure Shifu will be very understanding."

"No he won't," Po scoffed. "All he does in this series is heave long-suffering sighs and yell out the names of the recurring villains every time they show up."

"Hmm, you've got a good point," Crane admitted. "What's up with that, anyway?"

"No clue," Po said. "I mean, it's not like we ever actually imprison them really, so it's no surprise they keep coming back. And even when we do imprison them, they're just magically free again the next time the writers need them."

"Wow, do they put any effort into continuity at all?" Crane asked.

"Yes," Po said, "but only with things that don't matter, like the three kids that make up my fan club."

"Ugh, I hate those kids," Crane said.

"Everyone does," Po answered.

* * *

"A clam!?" Shifu exclaimed, because a fish doing Kung Fu is reasonable, but a clam is not. Although I'll admit that fish are at least slightly more resilient to being attacked with salt.

"In Po's defence it had a _really_ hard shell," Crane interjected. "Also, I was taken out just as easily as he was, so why is everyone only mad at him?"

"A shell? A really hard, itty-bitty clam shell?" Tigress said mockingly, laughing like the teenage girl the writers wished she was.

"Hey, didn't you use to be my friend at one point?" Po asked reasonably.

"Enough!" Shifu demanded, silencing his students, all of whom had joined Tigress in making fun of their friend and leader. "This is the fourth gold shipment stolen this month."

"Wait, we let three shipments get stolen before doing anything about it?" Po asked. "And if it was so important, why didn't you send all of us? Or at least Tigress?"

"Po, now is not the time to complain about how little alone time you two get," Shifu reprimanded him. "Your report only confirms the troubling rumours I've been hearing."

Shifu walked over to a table that was clearly in a completely different room to the one they had previously been standing in to set down a scroll that had also not been there before.

"My sources tell me that the bandit is from the land of the rising sun," the red panda explained grimly. "Japan."

"Wait, you have sources?" Po asked. "Who? And why didn't they say anything about the bandit being a clam? And if they're reliable sources, why didn't you realize the bandit was a serious enough threat to maybe warrant slightly better protection?"

"Po, we're on a tight schedule and don't have time to answer every logical question the viewers might have," Shifu reminded him. "Now, the Japanese are sending a great warrior—one who knows this villain well. It'll be our job to assist him when he arrives."

"So much of what you just said makes no sense that I'm not even going to bother arguing with it," Tigress should have said at this point.

"Shifu, please!" Po exclaimed. "I need to defeat the villain myself to justify my cockiness!"

"Oh, you will," Shifu insisted, "but a number of completely inconsequential things need to happen first, many of which will only anger or bore our target audience."

As if on cue, another Japanese voice sounded from behind Po.

"This is not about you, panda-san."

Po turned quickly, punching for some reason. However, his fist hit only thin air as the new arrival was much too short to be within its range. This might seem fortunate, but it really wasn't.

Po looked down at what appeared to be an oversized shrimp standing on the floor before him and felt his face crumple into a look of defeat.

"Sure," he said resignedly. Never before has so much truth been packed into one word.

The shrimp proceeded to introduce himself before bowing respectfully. As the others returned the gesture, however, Po simply looked upset.

"Hey, Master Jumbo," he began arrogantly, "No offence, but if the Dragon Warrior can't beat this clam, you sure as hell can't!"

At these words, Master Shifu and the Furious Five looked positively scandalized, even though this reasoning was quite sound in the context of the whole "the Dragon Warrior has limitless power" thing. Furthermore, they should be used to this kind of cockiness by now.

"Po," Shifu warned, "this is not the time for you to break character by being rude to an accomplished martial artist whom you would normally revere."

"Hey, I lost _one battle _and you decided to call in some random Japanese dude to take over from me," Po said defensively. "Tigress gets beat up nearly every episode but I don't see you replacing her—not that I'm complaining."

"Well, it's not my fault the producers enjoying watching me get my ass kicked," Tigress said. "Remember that one time we were chained together and you smashed my face against a tree about a dozen times?"

"Yeah, that was pretty degrading," Po admitted. "Still, you don't exactly have an impressive track record in this TV series."

"Well you try fighting while someone is forcibly injecting hormones into your bloodstream!" Tigress said.

"At least you don't have to deal with having a head that's so over-inflated its gravitational pull puts Mantis off balance!" Po shot back.

"Enough, both of you!" Shifu yelled. "This boring episode is long enough without you two bickering like this, no matter how much more interesting it is!"

"Fine," Po grunted. "But I still don't see how shrimp boy here is going to be of any help."

"You doubt my skill?" the shrimp asked in a strange voice.

"Tiny, I doubt everything about you," Po said, reciting possibly the only funny line in the entire episode. What Po clearly failed to realize, however, was that this shrimp had not zero, not two, but four legs. Basic math insists then that he must be infinitely more powerful than the stupid clam from earlier.

"In that case, you leave me no choice!" the shrimp exclaimed, drawing his sword. "I demand satisfaction!"

"Satisfaction?" Monkey asked. "That's a strange word to put there. I was thinking 'respect' or something."

"Yeah, and aren't martial arts about control?" Mantis inquired. "Trying to stab someone to death just because they insulted you kind of goes against everything they stand for."

The shrimp would not listen to such things as reason, however, lunging at Po vengefully. As he slashed his sword around in a way that didn't seem all that skilled, honestly, the sudden confrontation forced viewers to choose a side: Team cocky panda, or team ill-tempered shrimp. I, myself, prefer team Tigress.

"Relax, everybody," Po said confidently as he dodged the prawn's unimpressive attacks. "I can handle little Mr. Whiskers here."

Despite his assurances, the Furious Five decided to actually act like Po's friends for once and made to aid him. Perhaps they, unlike Po, had not forgotten that he had been completely and utterly humiliated by a clam only moments earlier.

Shifu, however, stopped his students from intervening. Apparently, he was of the opinion that lunging at the most important warrior in all of China with a sword was a perfectly valid way to make a point about respect—sorry, I meant to say satisfaction.

So, as the others watched, the shrimp jumped and danced and slashed around at Po, his sword never really coming that close to his opponent. Then, after what was clearly supposed to be an impressive display of swordsmanship, he stopped.

Po looked down at himself briefly to assess the damage and his eyes confirmed that the shrimp had not made even the slightest mark on him.

"Ha, you missed me!" Po exclaimed, figuring that the best response to someone trying to murder him over an insult was to yell more insults. "Pretty lousy swordsmanship, huh?"

Yes, yes it was.

"Wait for it, panda-san," the shrimp insisted.

After a few more seconds—just long enough to remove all plausibility from the sequence—Po's shorts fell predictably to the ground. This is, again, despite the fact that the shrimp's sword never actually touched him in the slightest.

Being a furry animal in an animated TV show, Po, of course, completely lacked any visible genitalia. Despite this, Po's sudden exposure seemed to take the other warriors by surprise: Monkey looked shocked, Crane looked confused, Mantis's face was obscured, Shifu looked disgusted, and Viper looked away. Tigress, meanwhile, remained completely impassive as her eyes dropped to Po's exposed regions. Make of that what you will.

Realizing his position, Po squealed in surprise, shuffling out of view momentarily only to return immediately with a brand new set of shorts. It seemed that shorts could be brought into sudden existence just as easily as tables and scrolls.

The shrimp was not done being vengeful, however, and took Po's hand.

"Your overconfidence is unseemly for a warrior," the shrimp said, flipping Po over and throwing him against a wall. "This is why I beat you so easily. Also, you are very chubby."

"Hey, overconfidence is my sole personality trait in this series!" Po defended. "Also, being fat would actually make me harder to flip around, so that joke doesn't make any sense."

"Did you see that?" Mantis asked after the shrimp had finally finished physically assaulting his good friend. His tone sounded impressed despite the fact that all the shrimp had done was flipped Po over, something every single person in that room was more than capable of doing.

"Yes," Tigress replied dreamily. "And it was…_amazing_."

At this, the others turned to her questioningly and I promptly changed allegiance to team Mantis.

"Uh, why do you look like you're having a small orgasm right now?" Crane asked. "You flip Po over all the time. It's really no big deal."

"Actually," Mantis reasoned, "if watching Po suffer physical harm gave her sexual pleasure, it would explain a LOT of things about this TV show."

Unfazed by the speculation going on around him, the shrimp turned to stare into Tigress's eyes, the latter returning the gaze as cheesy music began to play in the background. This music was, however, drowned out by the sound of a million betrayed fans crying out in anguish.

"Tigress, are you _blushing_?" Viper asked incredulously.

"Animals don't blush," Tigress said seriously, and correctly. "Also, this is fur, not skin. How would you even be able to tell?"

"Isn't it kind of out-of-character for you to fall in love with some random shrimp who sounds much older than you and who you've just met?" Monkey asked reasonably.

"Of course it is," Tigress confirmed. "And it makes even less sense given the amount of effort the writers of this show have gone through to try to make it seem as though I'm an emotionless bitch."

"Well then, this is officially the worst pairing ever," Mantis announced. Go team Mantis.

"Is it really that much worse than Po and the goat man?" Crane asked.

"Yes," Shifu said. "In every way possible."

"Even worse than all of the people who want Tigress to marry you?" Viper asked him. "Even though you're her father and teacher?"

"I'll admit that that's creepy and gives me chills," Shifu conceded, "but at least there would be a reason for Tigress to care about me."

"Oh, as opposed to the completely unlikeable shrimp who has no attractive qualities of any kind!" Mantis exclaimed.

"Wait, wait, wait," Po interjected in disbelief. "When anyone so much as implies that Tigress is interested in me—her best friend and confidant—she gets mad and throws up; but a gross Japanese shrimp dude shows up and swings his sword around a bit and she goes full-on schoolgirl?"

"I did mention the angry viewers," Shifu reminded him. "Also, in case you were wondering, no: this lazily developed, heavily forced, vomit-inducing romantic pairing serves absolutely no purpose to the plot in any way."

"Figures," Po said despairingly.

"Wait, there's a plot in this thing?" Mantis asked incredulously. "Could've had me fooled."

"I'm sorry to interrupt you," the shrimp piped up, jarringly reminding everyone that he was indeed still there and was not simply a bad dream, "but it's time for me to go into the required 'a long, long time ago' story explaining how the clam villain no one is really interested in came to be."

At this, everyone heaved a tired sigh and tried their best not to strain their eyes from all the rolling that occurred as, for the next forty seconds, the shrimp expounded a shallow back story for the clam that was only marginally better-constructed than the aforementioned love interest.

"And now he is raising another army," the shrimp finished lamely. "One that will lay waste to your entire country!"

"Meh, heard it before," Monkey yawned.

"Yeah, when you try to convince us that all of China is in jeopardy every single episode, but nothing with any kind of lasting impact ever occurs, we kind of lose the ability to feel even remotely concerned," Mantis explained.

"Also, is it just me, or is it somehow night time now?" Po asked. "It was midday when shrimpmaster started his story, and while I'll admit I slept through most of it, I doubt the story was that long."

"None of this is important," the shrimp insisted. "We must act now or China will fall!"

"You know what else I don't get?" Crane asked, wisely ignoring the shrimp. "How did a clam manage to _swim_ all the way from Japan to China? I think you're heavily underestimating the distances involved."

"And," Po added, "how can a clam survive out of the water? Or a shrimp for that matter?"

"Sheer force of will," the shrimp said.

"Yeah, that's not an answer," Po pointed out.

"If the clam is forming an army," Shifu said, hoping to move the plot forward before anyone dwelled on these questions for too long, "then I'd better alert the Imperial forces."

"That would be wise," the shrimp said needlessly. "Meanwhile, I will take two warriors with me to find the clam and bring him to justice."

"Two warriors?" Po asked. "What is it with everyone and only sending two warriors? There are seven of us here, not including Whiskers McShipSinker. Why don't we all go and stop him if he's such a big threat?"

"That would complicate the writing and animation," Shifu explained.

"Okay, fine," Po conceded, "but then why Tigress and Crane? Like, okay, I get that the shrimp wants to get into Tigress's pants, but TV Tigress is a huge pushover. If she lasts more than ten seconds in a fight, it'll be a new record."

"Are you seriously complaining about Tigress going with you?" Shifu asked, surprised.

"What? No one ever said I was going!" Po pointed out.

"Of course you're going!" Shifu exclaimed. "Don't be ridiculous!"

"Well, in that case, great!" Po said cheerfully. "More time with Tigress! Still don't know why Crane's going though."

"My ability to fly makes for a convenient plot device," Crane explained. "Also, I wouldn't get too excited: This just means you're going to have to suffer through the awkward and painful development of the Shrimpress relationship."

"Oh man, I didn't think about that," Po said dismayed.

As if on cue, the shrimp turned to Tigress purposefully.

"I could tell when I first saw you that you were a warrior of strength, courage, and honour," he said.

"No, no—see, people make that mistake all the time," Crane offered helpfully. "You're thinking of the movie Tigress. This Tigress is a warrior of hormones, anger, and things falling on her."

"In fact," the shrimp continued, unperturbed by Crane's comments, "while I was humiliating the panda, I composed a haiku in your honour."

"Yeah, how come no one feels even the slightest need to defend me on that one, by the way?" Po asked. "Some guy comes in and slashes a sword around at me and no one says a single thing. Is friendship even a concept that exists in this universe?"

Po's words fell on deaf ears, however, as the shrimp began reciting his poem: "Fighting with honour; foes falling like lotus leaves; death, virtue, and death."

"I think I threw up a little bit," Po said.

"We all did," Shifu added.

All except for Tigress, that is, who instead looked as though she were having another small orgasm. It was a short one, however, as she, Crane, and the cringe-inducing crustacean hastily made their leave. As soon as they were gone, Po turned urgently to his master.

"Shifu, you've got to let me go on this mission!" Po insisted. "Also, where the hell did Mantis, Monkey, and Viper go?"

"Well, no one is really stopping you," Shifu said. "After all, it's not like you've ever once obeyed any command I've ever given you in this series."

"So I can go?" Po asked.

"Officially, no," Shifu replied. "However, the writers think that kids will get confused if there are too many scenes without you in them, so just try not to let the whole Tiger Shrimp thing drive you completely insane."

"That's going to be a tall order," Po observed.

* * *

"This is where that clam jumped us last time," Crane said, pointing out the path from the first scene. If it weren't for the fact that the trail had apparently been attacked three other times before then, this might have served as a reasonable explanation for Crane being there.

"He will be nearby," the shrimp said, with no explanation of how he knew this. "We will rest here and compose our spirits."

"Compose our spirits?" Crane asked. "That was the best excuse you could come up with for stopping to let Po crash into the scene?"

"Tigress," the shrimp said, ignoring Crane as per usual. "I have something for you."

"Something besides this sword I'm carrying for no apparent reason?" Tigress asked.

"Yes," he answered.

Tigress kneeled before him as the shrimp handed her a white bandana with the Japanese flag on it. She accepted the gift without question, which goes against the writers' previous insistence that Tigress thinks everything is a trap.

"This will give you good fortune in war," he explained. "I made that up just now to impress you."

"I…I'm honoured," Tigress breathed heavily, wrapping the bandana around her head. "In fact, I'm so honoured that I'll completely ignore the fact that wearing a Japanese flag on my head is a slightly insensitive action for one of China's greatest heroes during a time of strained relations between our two countries."

She and the shrimp then proceeded to stare dreamily into each other's eyes, their gaze giving way to quite possibly the strangest "romantic" daydream even shown on television—and not just because neither of them had any pupils and Tigress was wearing a dress for some reason.

"Uh, did you two just have a romantic daydream that was both completely unnecessary and a terrible affront to everyone who likes Tigress as a character?" Crane asked.

"No!" Tigress insisted loudly. "There's no universe in which whatever just happened could be considered romantic."

So, as the scene below continued to be utterly stupid, Po decided to climb a tree for some reason. Since he could clearly hear everything Tigress and the shrimp were saying from his original hiding place, his actions were entirely unexplained. On the plus side, however, this was a far more interesting development than the romantic subplot that was unfolding below, and as such, it gave the audience a much needed opportunity to wash out their eyes.

"How can Tigress like that prawn?" Po asked as he climbed. Unfortunately, that question—like the show's inexplicably positive ratings—would remain one of life's great mysteries.

So, even though the branch he was situated on was clearly beginning to snap under his immense weight, Po continued to climb further out onto the limb, listening in to the conversation below.

"I will treasure this gift for eternity," Tigress said to the shrimp, or some bullshit like that. "Nothing could ever destroy the purity of this one moment, if only because this moment is far from pure. As a clear omen of our bond together, I've even made it through half an episode without something falling on me!"

At that exact moment, as though appeasing some cosmic deity, Po finally fell from the tree above, crushing Tigress below him. As she let out one of her trademark, uncharacteristically sarcastic remarks, the audience held its breath, hoping against hope that the impact had knocked some sense into her.

After a moment of suspense, Tigress threw Po angrily from her back, marking one of the rare occasions in which she was justified in her negative mood.

"Shifu ordered you to stay behind!" she yelled at him, even though she wasn't around to hear the master say this. "Don't you have any self control?"

"Self control?" Po asked. "You hit me every time you get upset, you have a small orgasm whenever this shrimp opens its mouth, and you make uncharacteristically sarcastic remarks at every opportunity. Since when do _you_ have any self control?"

"He's got a point, you know," Crane said.

"I agree, the panda can stay," the shrimp cut in.

"Hey, no one asked you anything," Po pointed out.

"You have no fear," the shrimp continued. "I respect that."

"I think you meant to say that you're _satisfied_ by that," Crane corrected.

"But," the shrimp added, continuing to answer questions no one was asking him, "if you wish to defeat the clam, you must learn this new skill the writers made up solely for the purpose of this episode."

The shrimp then proceeded to spout some cheesy advice and flip Po around for a while. With each throw, he recited the contents of a fortune cookie before demanding that the panda attack him again. This went on for nearly as long as the terrible pun from earlier before Po had a magical breakthrough and began to see things in slow-motion.

This high-quality, slow-motion effect was used to show some leaves moving, Tigress blinking, and Crane pruning his wings in disinterest (apparently he was equally as stimulated by this wonderful episode as the rest of us). It was not to last, however, as the supposedly complex slow-motion effect that Po had managed to learn in only a few minutes suddenly fell apart again to try to distract from the fact that Po had managed to learn a supposedly complex slow-motion effect in only a few minutes.

So, after a brief fight scene transpired in which Po didn't use even a single move he hadn't already known, the shrimp once again knocked our heroic Dragon Warrior to the ground.

"You started well," the prawn said. "Then what happened?"

Po tried to answer, but the shrimp simply interrupted him every time he used the word "I". While this might superficially seem wise, there is literally no way to say "I began to get cocky" without using the word "I", and that is in fact the reason Po lost focus—although, I suppose it is also possible that he remembered Tigress's orgasm from earlier and simply lost the will to live.

"You have potential, panda-san," the shrimp said, not realizing that that was the entire point of the first movie, "however, you aren't ready yet."

At this, Po looked dismayed, even though he had made it quite clear by this point that he had no respect for the shrimp's opinion in any way and so should hardly be bothered by this rebuke—and when I say he had no respect, I of course mean that he had no satisfaction for the shrimp's opinion.

"So…are we done _collecting our spirits _now?" Crane asked, reminding us that he and Tigress had been standing there watching Po get his ass kicked this whole time. "Because we haven't really done anything about the original problem yet."

"I don't know," Tigress said, "I think I might need to watch Po get flipped over a few more times to get me through the next ten minutes of this episode."

* * *

The three warriors and the dumb shrimp arrived at the clam's lair, sneaking in just in time to watch him give a lame pep talk to his massively underwhelming army.

"Our numbers swell with every passing day!" he exclaimed. "Soon, all of China will be ours!"

"There he is!" Po cried out from behind the doorway. "Him and his puny army!"

"Wait, we got all worked up over, like, ten guys?" Crane asked dubiously. "If Shifu did the smart thing and sent everyone instead of just two of us, it'd be like ten brutes against eight skilled martial artists."

"Shh! We do things my way!" the shrimp insisted, turning to Po. "It seems we will need your help panda-san."

"Need my help?" Po asked. "So until now your plan was to just sit me in a corner while you guys fought the 'army'? Why even bring me then? What is it with everyone in this episode refusing to use all of the resources at their disposal?"

"Crane, you and Tigress will draw off the troops," the shrimp said, ignoring Po. "I will flank, and then—"

"There are only ten guys and a clam," Tigress pointed out. "We once fought a battle in which we were outnumbered a thousand-to-one—we really don't need some elaborate plan."

"Tigress!" shrimp dude exclaimed. "Your sudden return to the land of the logical ruined the big reveal that Po has charged in to fight the clam himself!"

"Yeah, because the ever-so-subtle way the camera jerked to the right just now totally didn't give it away," she replied. This one time, her uncharacteristic sarcasm was worth it—or would have been had this conversation actually taken place.

"Aww, your first fight," Crane teased, smirking at the two bickering before him. The words only just finished leaving his mouth when his expression faltered. "Ugh, I just made myself feel sick."

Crane's sickness would have to wait, however, as Po had indeed gone charging in on his own, proving yet again that character development doesn't even slightly exist in this show. In response to this development, the two remaining warriors and the dumb shrimp leapt into the room after him.

So, as Po, his sidekick of the week, and his sexy but clearly delusional companion fought inexplicably slowly against the, again, ten buffalo in the room, the shrimp made straight for the clam, who drew a sword out of nowhere. Apparently, those too could be conjured from thin air.

"This time, I will destroy you!" the clam exclaimed. This was a reasonably serious threat as the clam was capable of both flying and holding a sword without any hands—clear indications that it was magic.

"No," the shrimp returned lamely. "It is I who will destroy you, honourless one!"

The two Japanese warriors then proceeded to engage in a tiring sword battle that looked almost as ridiculous as that time Tigress fought someone from inside a box. Then, after a few clashes and grunts, the shrimp threw his opponent's sword from its…uh…grasp?

Seizing the upper hand, the shrimp raised his own sword above his head dramatically. Just as he was about to defeat the stupid clam once and for all, however, he paused momentarily for the sole purpose of giving Po enough time to come and ruin things, as apparently no episode is complete without that important detail.

Sure enough, Po appeared out of nowhere right on time, accidentally knocking the shrimp's sword away in the process somehow.

"Po-san!" the shrimp exclaimed. "What are you doing?"

"Sorry, shrimp boy," Po said, "but he's mine!"

"Look, if it's about Tigress, I'm never going to be seen again after this episode!" the shrimp said desperately. "But you must let me defeat this enemy!"

"I'll admit that Tigress's inexplicable infatuation with you boils my blood," Po confessed, "But this is about my need to have my cockiness validated, not my need to have my best friend and confidant express affection—or indeed, positive attention of any kind—towards me."

"I know it must be frustrating to have someone you cared so deeply about in the movies be so mean, belittling, and bitchy towards you in this TV series," the shrimp said. "But you aren't exactly good friend material in this show either."

"Enough of this!" Po said, hating that the shrimp was being reasonable for once. "This clam is mine!"

"Wrong, chubby one," the clam corrected. "You are both mine!"

The clam jumped suddenly into the air, using its ability to fly to break a sizeable stone slab from the ceiling, which fell towards Po and the shrimp below. I want to make it clear at this point that it is implied that Po's actions are the sole reason the clam was able to escape, despite the fact that there was literally nothing stopping him from pulling this same trick earlier on.

The stone slab proceeded to fall directly onto the defenceless shrimp master, missing Po entirely due to the fact that he had somehow completely disappeared. So, stuck to the rolling mass alone, the shrimp was thrown unceremoniously through a wall and down a random chasm that had no reason to exist within the confines of the hideout whatsoever.

"Whiskers!" Tigress called in anguish, appearing out of nowhere quite quickly, along with Crane and Po—the latter clearly having returned from wherever the hell he had gone.

"Avenge me!" the shrimp called as he fell. Whether this out-of-place line was weirder than the complete loss of his accent is left as an exercise to the reader (the correct answer is that neither can be considered weird under the premise that a clam can wield a sword).

"No!" Po yelled. It is not understood at what point he too developed feelings for the shrimp.

"Whiskers…" Tigress said sadly, making a face that was supposed to look as though she was suffering great pain at the shrimp's demise but instead looked like she was trying really hard to remember why she had liked him in the first place. "Po, you didn't listen to him!"

"You know, considering my actions directly led to someone dying, you don't sound that upset," Po pointed out. "Shouldn't you be angrier?"

"If you ask me, this is the best thing that's happened all episode," Crane should have said.

Tigress wouldn't get a chance to properly reprimand Po for indirectly murdering someone, however, as the clam's voice sounded behind them.

"Destroy them!" he called, prompting the magically-healed buffalo from earlier to draw their swords.

Recovering quickly from the loss of the least likeable sympathetic character since that goat girl, the warriors turned and prepared for battle. Crane, however, decided to take Po and Tigress in his talons and flee the scene instead.

"No!" Tigress said determinedly, struggling against the bird's grasp. "We have to stay and fight!"

"Wow," Po remarked. "That's the most sensible thing you've said all episode! Does the shrimp just emit some sort of strange chemical that makes you irrational?"

"Let us go! Let us—wait," Tigress paused. "How is Crane strong enough to carry us both? Combined, we must weigh nearly a thousand pounds."

"Plus," Po reasoned, "we're both probably more than strong enough to break free from his grip if we really wanted to."

"We can't fight them," Crane insisted. "There are too many!"

"What?" Po asked incredulously. "There are just as many as there were when we started—ten or fifteen at most. How is that too many?"

"And we're going to have to come back again later anyway," Tigress added logically.

"Look, I didn't write the show," Crane defended. "We're going, and that's that."

So, as our heroes fled in a manner most cowardly, the clam turned hastily to his troops.

"They will alert the imperial army!" he exclaimed. "We must strike now! To the Valley of Peace!"

What the clam didn't know was that Shifu was already supposed to have alerted the imperial army ages ago. Furthermore, even with the ability to fly, the odds of a fifteen-man army conquering all of China single-handedly were slim at best. This milder stupidity, however, was eclipsed by the completely nonsensical decision to start their conquest by attacking the one village in all of China with a higher ratio of Kung Fu masters to citizens than any other. Yes, clearly the stakes were high and the suspense had viewers on the edges of their seats.

* * *

"Let me go!" Tigress yelled. "Let me go!"

"Once again, you're more than strong enough to break free if you want to," Crane repeated. "Also, we're flying over a huge chasm right now, so you might want to wait."

This silenced Tigress for a few more moments before Crane set his charges down in the forest where they had collected their spirits.

"Tigress, I'm so sorry," Po apologized unconvincingly. "Even though your budding relationship with that shrimp was the worst thing I've ever seen on TV, it was wrong of me to 'accidentally' kill him off like that."

"Didn't you learn anything from him?" Tigress asked harshly, succeeded at least in sounding more upset this time. "This isn't about you!"

"Okay…" Po began uncertainly. "Uh, how am I supposed to apologize without saying—"

"It's not about you!" Tigress repeated.

"But you—"

"It's not about me either!" Tigress exclaimed. "We've got to go back there and stop that clam! That's what a samurai would do!"

"And also what a respectable Kung Fu master would do," Crane pointed out, taking on the role as the voice of reason in Tigress's mental absence. "I mean, the whole samurai bit was kind of unnecessary. It's not like we only started doing this stuff once Shrimpy McCharacterBreaker showed up."

"Crane, I didn't come up with these lines," Tigress sighed. "Please just let us get on with this episode so I can get the seafood smell out of my fur as soon as possible."

So, the warriors rushed back to the mountain ledge from earlier—the exact same one—and watched as the still ridiculously underwhelming "army" marched out of its hideout.

"They're marching on the valley!" Crane exclaimed. "As if anything bad ever happens anywhere else."

"They'll destroy everything," Tigress said grimly.

"I don't know," Po disagreed. "Shifu, Viper, Monkey, and Mantis should be more than capable of handling a few buffalo. I mean, we did just fine, and there are just three of us."

"Shut up Po," Tigress said harshly. "Crane, you've got to go warn them!"

"But what about you guys?" Crane protested.

"You're next to useless in this episode anyway," Tigress reminded him. "Go!"

Crane did as he was told as Tigress ran hastily down the hill to where she had left the sword from earlier. There was still no explanation of why she had brought it in the first place or of why she had decided to then leave it sitting by a tree instead of actually using it.

"I've got to stall that army," Tigress said, finally taking charge for once in this TV series.

"How?" Po asked. "They outnumber you like ten to one! I mean, that would be child's play for the real Tigress, but you usually can't handle even one enemy!"

"A true samurai doesn't worry about themselves," Tigress said pointedly.

"Or again, any warrior," Po said. "No need to keep throwing "samurai" around. Also, coming up with a plan for defeating the army isn't making things about you; it's just a logical thing to do."

"I wouldn't expect you to understand," Tigress responded cryptically.

"Fine, but can you at least take off the headband?" Po asked. "It looks really dumb and I'd like to get one last look to remember you by before you head off to your inevitable death."

"Po, this isn't the time," she said. "I smell like fish and I can't tell whether it's making me sick or hungry."

"You're right, Tigress," he agreed, a look of determination spreading across his face. He pointed suddenly to the sky. "Look, an omen of good fortune!"

Despite the fact that even housecats don't fall for that trick, Tigress turned excitedly to see what she was missing. Po took this opportunity to paralyze her, which he can apparently do somehow now. Why he did this instead of just going with her will never be understood.

"Well, I certainly didn't expect that to work," Po said. "My only regret is that there are now probably thousands of fans furiously writing erotic fiction centered around the possible implications of my ability to make Tigress pass out at will."

Ignoring the unfortunate implications of his actions, he proceeded to take the bandana from Tigress's head—because if he's already crossed the line by paralyzing her for no good reason, he might as well steal her personal possessions as well.

"You'll not be dying with honour today," Po said bravely, as if the writers who made a point of insisting that Tai Lung was still alive even though he was clearly dead would ever kill off a main character—I mean, uh…except for that shrimp guy who's totally and irrefutably dead, right?

Po continued: "Now it's time for me to demonstrate that I've learned that not everything is about me by forcibly ensuring that I and only I am the one to defeat the clam, just like I wanted from the get go."

* * *

So, Po caught up to the clam's "army" and proceed to waste everyone's time by intentionally getting his ass kicked again. He did this with the objective of stalling for time so that the not-dead-after-all shrimp could show up with the imperial army, which was also quite small and suddenly made the clam's threat seem much more real. As for why Po chose to stall for time by acting like an idiot instead of actually fighting the clam, it can only be assumed that the sequence was planned by whichever writer made the mistake of thinking that the pun from the first scene was actually funny.

"Shrimpy! You're alive!" Po exclaimed. "How?"

"There was a ledge," the shrimp replied.

"No there wasn't," Po corrected. "Unless it was out of sight, in which case you fell more than far enough by that time to be dead anyway."

"That's not important," the shrimp insisted.

"No, but it is disappointing," Po said.

"Ha!"

The two warriors' reunion was quickly cut short as the clam used its flying abilities to attack the shrimp, hitting him exactly one time. This was enough to put him out of the battle for good. Apparently.

So, with the shrimp out of action, Po used his slow-motion technique from earlier to bring the clam to justice. Even though the episode had built up to this moment throughout its entire twenty-minute run time, the end result was far from impressive, and after a few anticlimactic blows, the clam had its top shell sliced off. Judging from the buffalos' reaction to this development, the shell was the source of the clam's power all along and the broken clam was now defeated.

"Not bad," the shrimp said to Po, appearing out of nowhere as is traditional for the show. Apparently he needed only a few moments of rest to recover from what had previously seemed like a serious injury for he seemed good as new. "For a beginner, I mean," he added, continuing to be unlikeable.

"I'm actually pretty far from a beginner at this point," Po corrected.

Hearing the sound of anxious footsteps behind him, Po turned questioningly to see Tigress running towards him fervently, closing in fast.

"Tigress!" Po exclaimed, holding his hands up defensively. "I'm sorry I groped you while you were—"

Tigress ignored Po's somewhat worrying confessions, however, running past him and addressing the shrimp.

"You're alive!" she squealed. "This is so…"

For a moment, Tigress's face changed drastically. She looked as though she were only just realizing that she had spent the entire episode acting like a complete dumbass over an ugly crustacean. For those few seconds, the world made sense; and then the writers shot another hormone dart into her ass.

"You're alive!" she repeated, taking the prawn in her arms and hugging him. I could point out that Tigress doesn't hug people, as indicated by the others' reactions to her famous hug in the second movie, but that'd be too easy. More confusing was Po's reaction, which was to smile instead of retching uncontrollably.

* * *

"Between us, there can be no words of farewell," the shrimp said to Tigress, about to make his leave.

"Why not?" Tigress asked.

"There just can't," he insisted.

"Well, perhaps I could come visit you in Japan," she suggested.

"We both know that will never happen," the shrimp reminded her. "Believe me when I say that it is for the best."

"Master Shrimp, please accept this sacred scroll as a token of honour," Shifu said. "I can make them appear at will, so I have no need for this one."

"Man, this episode is really laying it on thick with the whole 'honour' thing," Po realized. "I'm sure if I cared enough to look into it, it would turn out that most of the instances in which this episode used that word are inconsistent with ancient Chinese philosophy."

"I am honoured," the shrimp said, ignoring Po while simultaneously proving his point. "But this honour should go to Po instead."

"Well then I'm honoured by the honour your honourable shrimpness has bestowed upon me most honourably," Po accepted graciously.

With that, the shrimp took his leave, never to be seen again. We hope.

"Well I'm glad that's over," Mantis said.

"Hey, you had it easy sitting back here at the Jade Palace," Crane scoffed.

"Yeah, I never thought Tigress would ever make me want to throw up," Po said. "Boy was I wrong."

"Hey, I let you pretend to paralyze me," Tigress defended. "Stop complaining."

"Yes, I think we can all agree that none of us will miss Master Shrimp," Shifu said wisely.

At this, everyone nodded their agreement in unison before falling into a brief silence.

"So who's going to be my sidekick next week?" Po asked energetically. "Can it be Tigress? Please!?"

"I'm fine with that," Crane said.

"Me too," Monkey agreed.

"And me," Viper added.

"I can wait," Mantis said.

"Then it's settled," Shifu decided. "Tigress, you'll be Po's sidekick in the next episode."

"Woo hoo!" Po exclaimed as the others left to each take a much needed shower. "Looks like it's you and me Tigress!"

"Alright," Tigress said resignedly, "but don't get your hopes up. If history is any indication, I'll probably be back to loathing you entirely at the start of the next episode."

"Still better than watching you make googly eyes with a shrimp," Po shrugged.

"Ugh, I think I'm going to need a nice long shower too," Tigress moaned.

"Well, I had goat man and you had shrimpfest," Po said. "Let's call it even and hope this show stops sucking one day."

"Amen," Tigress smiled. "Actually, speaking of the goat man, I thought we got married in the last chapter of these parody things?"

"Well, in keeping with the spirit of the original TV show, the author intentionally avoided any and all continuity," Po explained.

"I see," Tigress nodded. "So…when does this chapter end?"

"Not sure," Po replied. "There hasn't really been a strong final line or anything—you know, something to wrap this whole thing up nicely."

"What if I told you that I loved you?" Tigress asked seriously. "Would that work?"

"Maybe, but I think the universe would explode," Po answered.

"Would that prevent another episode of this horrible show from being made?" Tigress inquired hopefully.

"Not sure, but it's worth a shot," Po reasoned. "Frankly, I'd rather perish in a fiery ball of death than watch the writers of this show defile your character any further."

Tigress grinned. "That's why I love you."


	4. The Spirit Orbs of Master Ding

**The Spirit Orbs of Master Ding**

Tigress charged at Po, throwing her fist at him with deadly intent.

"Whoop, can't touch this!" the panda exclaimed, rotating his body to avoid her punch and establishing that his opponent apparently has terrible aim in this show.

Frustrated, Tigress tried again, and once more Po managed to avoid her attack with ease, somehow. This quickly gave way to an alternating sequence of lunges and dodges that went on implausibly for several seconds before Po finally took his opponent by the leg and began swinging her around. After some pointless twirling and jumping up into the air that looked almost as ridiculous as the time a fish kicked Tigress's ass, Po defeated his adversary once and for all by slamming her into the ground and sitting on her head.

"What!?" Tigress exclaimed, justifiably surprised that Po had bested her so easily and in such a humiliating manner.

"Well, well," Po began, already summoning his most arrogant voice, "Look who just beat the unbeatable Tigress—oh that's right, I did! Say it: I rule!"

Tigress struggled pathetically against Po's weight, unable to remove him from her back even though she had done so numerous times in the past (Po falls on her a lot in this series).

"You got lucky," she spat, giving up finally. "Also, I forgot to account for the increased size of your head in this series."

"Lucky?" Po asked incredulously. "No offence, but if your ability to defeat me in combat relies even remotely on luck, you're probably doing this whole Kung Fu thing wrong."

"Stop pointing out how little sense my lines make and get off me so you can kick my ass a few more times," Tigress hissed angrily.

So he did, repeatedly defeating the strongest member of the Furious Five and quite possibly the most badass character to have ever lived without so much as breaking a sweat or even using more than one hand. While this was supposed to establish that Po had turned into an unstoppable force of nature in the course of his training, it succeeded only in making Tigress look like a pushover—which, to be fair, she is in this series.

Eventually, the uncomfortable montage of embarrassing defeats came to an end, culminating in a few obligatory clips of Tigress being smashed against various things extremely violently, at times with enough force to kill a smaller animal—a human being, for instance.

"Ha ha, that's starting to feel kind of bad," Po said, lying on Tigress's back yet again. "Except I'm not—_at all_!"

"I know it's been said about a dozen times already, but didn't we use to be friends at one point?" Tigress asked. "Also, for a show so determined to keep us apart, they sure had us lying on top of each other a lot during that montage."

"Yeah," Po reasoned, "but the writers of this show seem to get off on watching you have your head bashed against things repeatedly, so they probably don't understand the implications of such innocuous things as lying on top of each other."

"I see," Tigress grunted, unimpressed. "So would now be a good time to point out that it makes no sense for you to be so much better than me suddenly? Or that real sparring doesn't usually involve kicking people in the head so hard they go flying through a door?"

"Oh, don't worry," Po reassured her. "There's more than enough bullshit remaining in this episode to go around. We've only just started."

"Great," Tigress moaned.

"Right, on to contests of strength!" Po exclaimed.

So, Po and Tigress proceeded to compete against each other in such classic displays of strength as throwing hammers, lifting weights, and wrestling arms. For each competition, the two warriors put forth their best effort and, each time, Po came out victorious by an implausible margin. It was at this point that viewers realized that this episode was not about to break the mould by actually respecting Tigress's character for once.

For reasons that should be obvious, the arm wrestling contest came last. Obviously.

"Ha ha, look at that!" Po gloated obnoxiously, slamming Tigress's paw against the table and preparing to set a new cockiness record. "Better at Kung Fu, stronger than you…the Dragon Warrior is on fire today!"

At this record-setting remark, Tigress growled threateningly—as opposed to a encouraging growl, of course.

"Woah, and so are you," Po said, backing down faster than this episode was written. "I think I'll just go gloat over here."

"Wait, what?" Tigress asked, confused. "We literally just established that you're stronger than me in every way. What exactly are you afraid I'll do to you?"

"Who knows?" Po replied. "Maybe you'll find another unlikable shrimp to have a vomit-inducing romantic fling with."

"Ugh," Tigress moaned. "You promised you wouldn't bring that up."

"Hey, movie Tigress never does anything embarrassing," Po explained. "There's no way I'm going to pass up an opportunity like this!"

"Come on!" Tigress pleaded. "Was the shrimp thing really any worse than you and the goat man?"

Po simply stared at her.

"Okay, fine," Tigress sighed. "You win again."

* * *

Frustrated by the morning's events, Tigress lashed out relentlessly at the wooden alligators in the training hall, smashing them to bits impressively and leaving everyone wondering why she was never even remotely this skilled when it came time to actually fight someone. With each opponent she struck, her ferocity grew and her eyes became livid until deadly intent was apparent in her every move.

"Think you're stronger than me now?" she asked through gritted teeth, tearing yet another alligator to shreds and panting heavily. "How about now?"

Just as viewers began to grow uncomfortable at the slightly unsettling implication that Tigress literally wanted to murder Po over a few contests, Tigress looked up to see her fellow warriors eyeing her warily.

"Um…hey Tigress," Crane began cautiously.

"Anything you want to talk about?" Viper asked kindly, in-character for once.

"Yeah, like being jealous of Po?" Mantis ventured—not in-character, but excused.

"I am not jealous of Po!" Tigress insisted loudly, tactfully failing to convince anyone. "I'm just kind of…jealous of Po."

"Oh, yeah, jealousy—that's _totally _in line with your personality," Mantis drawled sarcastically to no one in particular.

"Aw, come on Tigress," Monkey offered. "Your frustration is only clouding your focus. You're still way better than Po at…uh…all kinds of things!"

"Name one," Tigress challenged doubtfully. Technically, this was a trick question as Po's abilities seemed to change drastically from one episode to the next, but it was also a reasonable question.

"Uh…" Monkey stalled, having clearly not thought his last sentence through. "I can't think of anything, actually."

"What? I can!" Mantis exclaimed. "Climbing stairs, being sarcastic, having things fall on her, looking attractive…and that's just in this crappy TV show! In the movies, she's better than Po at most things!"

Tigress sighed, still not comforted by this. "It's time for this warrior to face the ugly truth: Po has become…better than me at everything."

"Who would've thought," Crane said, except using stupider words. "I mean, that is technically his destiny as the Dragon Warrior, but still."

"Well Po certainly didn't think so," Tigress scoffed. "That would've required some concentration."

"You know, it seems impossible, but you were funnier _before_ you started being uncharacteristically sarcastic," Mantis confessed. "And, you know…mean."

"Wait, that's it!" Tigress exclaimed.

"You're going to stop being snarky and go back to being cool?" Mantis asked excitedly.

"No, don't be stupid," Tigress replied. "Kids TV shows these days require at least one sarcastic and mean female character each. The producers think that it makes them look progressive somehow."

"Wait, let me get this straight," Crane interjected. "The producers took one of the most badass, independent, and intelligent—yet also nice, supportive, and selfless—female characters ever conceived, and decided she needed to be mean, sarcastic, and easily defeated instead? Why?"

"To them, sarcasm makes you a 'strong female character,'" Monkey explained sadly.

"Yep," Mantis lamented. "It's a pain that cuts deep."

"So…if you aren't going to stop being snarky," Viper started, "then maybe you've realized that you shouldn't be jealous of your best friend for fulfilling his destiny and life dream?"

"No, that would force the writers to perform actual character development," Tigress said dismissively. "What I meant is that I can beat Po at mental concentration!"

"Concentration?" Mantis intoned dubiously. "Yeah, that sounds like a great plan. I mean, it's not like you're easily distracted by anything—say, oh I don't know, jumbo shrimp—right?"

Tigress sighed heavily. "When are people going to stop bringing that up?"

"As soon as the memory fades enough for it to stop bringing up our lunches," Mantis replied.

* * *

"And that, Po," Shifu finished dramatically, "is the meaning of life."

"Wait," Po rebutted, "If you knew the meaning of life this whole time, why did you need Oogway around to clean up after your messes for so long before you finally learned how to balance praise with reprimanding and stopped ruining people's childhoods?"

"It was just a joke," Shifu defended. "This show _does_ make jokes from time to time, you know."

"I'll believe it when I see it," Po maintained.

As Shifu and Po talked, Tigress watched from behind a pillar, looking quite sad and hurt as her master congratulated Po on his training. The pain she felt from having her cold and distant father lay praise on someone else despite never once giving her a word of encouragement would have been an excellent point to expand upon, but the show decided instead to never bring it up again. Then again, given the quality of the show's writing, it's probably for the best.

"I'm sorry, did I interrupt your daily chastising?" Tigress asked, walking out to meet Po after Shifu had left.

"Daily praising, actually," Po said arrogantly, although I suppose cockiness is implied at this point and so pointing it out must seem redundant. "I haven't had a chastising in weeks. I guess I'm just rocking the suddenly-better-at-most-stuff-than-you Po."

"I think I just threw up a little bit," Tigress admitted.

"Well, now you know how it feels," Po replied.

"Your Kung Fu skills have improved—I'll give you that," Tigress conceded. "But what about your mental acuity?"

"We'll see," Po answered, unperturbed by Tigress's extremely creepy facial expression. "Just as soon as you explain what acuity means."

"Oh, sorry," Tigress said, straightening up. "I forgot that you're an idiot in this series. It means concentration—focus."

"Actually, it means sharpness or keenness," Po should have corrected. "Kind of like an intense game of 'what number am I thinking of'!"

"No, not even remotely like—"

"It's four!" Po proclaimed. "Not four? Nine? Eleventy? Did I say four?"

"Po, stop," Tigress interrupted. "This is getting embarrassing for everyone involved."

"Okay, how then?" he asked.

* * *

"Well, something like this," Tigress replied, appearing before three blue spheres in a wooden case and looking over at Po. "Controlling Shifu's meditation balls with my mind."

"Wait, so you want to play with Shifu's balls?" Po deadpanned.

"Eww! Po!" Tigress exclaimed, immediately offended. "That's gross! He's my father!"

"So?" Po dismissed. "It's just a joke, and a much funnier one than anything this show has come up with."

"How would you feel if I joked about you playing with _your_ dad's balls?" Tigress demanded.

"Geese don't have balls," Po said simply, leaning in closer to Tigress and adding in a whisper, "but pandas do."

"I don't like the way this parody is going," Tigress muttered.

"Actually, should you really be doing this?" Po asked, suddenly serious. "I mean, it doesn't seem like you to defy Shifu simply to try to best me at something."

"It doesn't seem like me to be petty and jealous either," Tigress pointed out. "Or hormonal, or mean, or sarcastic, or easily defeated, or—"

"Alright, alright," Po conceded. "Mind control away!"

So, Tigress opened the doors to the wooden case and proceeded to close her eyes in concentration, grunting strangely in the process.

"Uh…are you doing what it looks like you're doing?" Po asked. "Because we have a bathroom for that."

"I'm concentrating!" Tigress explained.

"Yeah, I do that too when I—"

"Shh!" Tigress hissed.

Po complied and, for a short while, the only noise to be heard was the sound of Tigress grunting suggestively. After a few uneventful moments, the panda spoke up again.

"So…is something supposed to happen?" he asked.

At this Tigress ceased trying to void her bowels and looked at Shifu's balls again. The old orbs had not moved in the slightest, and for a hopeful moment it seemed this episode would end prematurely.

Then, suddenly, the orbs lit up, glowing a bright blue colour and hovering out ominously into the small room. They collected together to form a tight ring before floating towards the ceiling, spinning slowly.

"Wow, you _are_ good," Po commented stupidly.

"I—I'm not doing it," Tigress stuttered.

"Then how are they…?"

"I have no idea," Tigress answered, sounding frightened.

Suddenly, as if on cue, Shifu's balls began shooting about the room explosively, smashing a random vase and shattering a nearby mirror. This violent behaviour quickly sent Po and Tigress into a frenzy as they tried frantically to avoid the wayward orbs.

The chaos ultimately culminated in the two warriors—who were both experienced Kung Fu masters with excellent reflexes and impeccable bodily awareness—smashing into each other hard before collapsing into a heap on the ground.

Once again, Po was lying on top of Tigress. This time, however, the tiger master decided to violently kick the panda off of her instead of struggling futilely against his weight. Why she was unable to do this only moments earlier will never be understood.

"How could I be so stupid?" she asked inwardly as she chased desperately after Shifu's balls. If only someone knew the answer to that question.

Tigress made it only a short distance, however, before she stopped hastily, halted by the sudden appearance of Shifu before her. This action resulted in Po slamming into her back (yes, Po rammed into Tigress from behind while she pursued Shifu's balls).

Understandably bemused by her behaviour, Shifu eyed his daughter and top student suspiciously. Perhaps he was wondering at which point she had been replaced by a mean, sarcastic, underwhelming impostor. Eventually, his gaze caught on the empty wooden case behind the two warriors, and he gasped in shock.

"Po, what did you do!?" he exclaimed, heaving his traditional long-suffering sigh. "I thought you'd embraced your Dragon Warriorness and left this sort of folly behind."

"What? Since when do I need to embrace anything?" Po asked. "I _am_ the Dragon Warrior; I don't need to embrace it. Like, did you forget that the whole point of the first movie was that—you know what? It's not even worth it. I'll just accept the blame for Tigress."

"It wasn't Po," Tigress confessed, being a respectable person for once by wholly accepting the blame for her own mistake—for now, anyway. "It was me."

Shifu sighed heavily yet again, apparently forgetting that he never once did this in the movies, before dismissing Po and closing his eyes as he addressed his daughter.

"Tigress, I don't know what's gotten into you," he said. "Those weren't just any meditation balls: they were irreplaceable spirit orbs."

"Well, if they were so dangerous and irreplaceable, then why did you leave them in an unlocked cabinet?" Tigress asked reasonably. "I mean, they're obviously capable of flying away on their own, so this was pretty much inevitable."

"This is not the time to be sensible, Tigress," Shifu insisted. "Instead, it's time for me to go into the required 'a long, long time ago' back story, which will only give my balls more time to cause trouble."

"Can you please rephrase your last sentence?" Tigress inquired.

"Uh, I suppose so," Shifu complied. "I need to launch into the 'a long, long time ago' back story now in order to give my balls more time to get into the hands of the villain."

"Never mind," Tigress said, giving up. "Also, can we not do this stupid back story thing? I mean, they're all the same: A long time ago, the Valley of Peace was threatened by a terrible villain with inexplicable magical powers. That villain nearly destroyed everything before he was eventually defeated and—apparently inadequately—imprisoned by Oogway. Now, over a hundred years later, my actions have somehow reintroduced that threat all over again for the sake of this show's plot. The only thing that's different this time is that, for once, it wasn't Po that messed everything up."

"Uh…alright then," Shifu said uncertainly. "Anyway, if the spirit orbs return to Master Ding, he will attack the valley once again, because apparently there aren't any other villages worth attacking in this entire country."

"Don't worry, don't worry!" Po shouted, returning suddenly. "Crises averted! I got your balls back, Shifu!"

The panda proceeded to place three vaguely round objects in the cabinet before closing the doors, totally not looking even remotely suspicious the entire time.

"Well, Tigress," Shifu said, apparently satisfied by this and also completely incapable of recognizing his own balls. "Lucky for you, the Dragon Warrior is looking out for you."

"Statistically speaking, it's the other way around much more often," Tigress pointed out, but this fell on deaf ears.

"Well done, Po," Shifu went on. "Tigress, try not to be so careless in the future."

With that, the red panda strode away, leaving the two totally-not-friends-in-any-way warriors alone together again.

"There is no possible way you caught those flying orbs," Tigress insisted, forgetting that Po is basically a god in this series—that is, except when there's seafood around.

"How about, 'thanks for getting me out of trouble, Po'?" the panda returned. "Or, you know, something remotely nice?"

"Are these…nuts?" Tigress asked, scrutinizing the contents of the wooden case.

"No!" Po insisted. "They're silver-painted nuts!"

"That's not going to fool Shifu," Tigress said. "I mean, technically they already did, but we still need to get the real orbs before Master Ding gets them!"

"Who?" Po asked. "I wasn't around for the lame back story, remember?"

"No time," Tigress said. "I have to get to that mountain."

* * *

"There it is," Tigress said, indicating the suspiciously familiar-looking structure ahead. "Ding's prison castle!"

"Already?" Po asked in disbelief. "Well that was fast. I thought this place was supposed to be far away—and also, you know…not an exact copy of a building from an earlier episode."

"Has anyone ever told you that you talk to much?" Tigress asked pointedly.

"No," Po replied. "Has anyone ever told you that you walk funny in this show?"

"I'm beginning to regret taking you with me," Tigress admitted.

"Well, you'll be glad you did when I save your life later on!" Po countered.

"No I won't," Tigress insisted. "I mean that both in the sense that I'd rather die than continue living this shallow and meaningless existence, and in that I literally won't be grateful at all later on when you rescue me."

"Oh come on, play along!" Po pleaded. "I'll go first: It's a good thing I'm here! This way I can protect you with my Dragon Warriorness!"

"Is that supposed to be insulting, or chivalrous?" Tigress asked innocently. "I can't tell."

"A bit of both," Po answered. "However, given your track record in this series, it's probably good advice."

At this precise moment, a thunderclap rang out loudly, causing Po to jump fearfully into Tigress's arms. Despite that fact that she had carried him in this manner on a least one occasion before, this act threw the accomplished Kung Fu master off balance so that Po could crush her yet again. Perhaps the writers were going for a record of their own.

* * *

Po and his sexy sidekick of the week entered the mountaintop prison cautiously, striding purposefully through the debris.

"Did you hear that?" Po asked suddenly, coming to a stop. "I can't tell if it was a noise or just my mind realizing that this exact interior has been used multiple times before in this series."

"Must have just been the wind," Tigress dismissed. "I realize that's the lamest response possible and I don't care."

It wasn't just the wind, however, as a sizeable column nearby developed a large crack across its center and began to fall towards her ominously. As it toppled, Tigress remained completely oblivious to the danger she was in, her lack of awareness completely contradicting all of the times she managed to sense trouble before anyone else throughout the second movie.

"Tigress!" Po exclaimed, lunging towards his companion and pushing her to safety just in time.

He continued to shield her from the raining cloud of debris before returning to his feet and reaching out to help her up.

"Another save for the Po man!" he exclaimed, somewhat ruining the moment.

"You could try it without gloating," Tigress muttered.

"And you could try being appreciative when someone saves your life," Po shot back. "Besides, gloating's all I've got."

"No it isn't," Tigress corrected. "You have a loving father, five close friends, a secondary father figure in Shifu, your life dream of being a Kung Fu master, and the reverence of the entire Valley."

"Oh yeah," Po said. "How could I have forgotten all of that stuff?"

As though the world itself were laughing at this terrible oversight, a maniacal voice rang out around the room.

"Okay, that definitely wasn't the wind," Po said.

"I thought we established that nothing ever was in the first place," Tigress reminded him.

"This place really is haunted!" Po exclaimed, ignoring her.

Seeing as Po hadn't heard the whole Master Ding back story, this surprise might have actually made sense on his part. Of course, that would raise the question of why Tigress had never bothered to repeat the story to him at some point. Then again, perhaps there simply hadn't been enough time to do so given that their journey had apparently only taken a few seconds.

Whatever the explanation, the ghost that actually did exist proceeded to attack the two intruders by possessing inanimate objects, such as axes and suits of amour, and throwing them at his opponents. The two warriors fended off these attacks most impressively for a few moments before a suit of amour took Tigress hostage. Po responded to this development by saving her life once again only to receive a dirty look by way of thanks. At least the writers are consistent, I suppose.

"Look, the orbs!" Tigress cried out, pointing out what indeed appeared to be a set of glowing balls.

So, the Kung Fu masters wasted no time in giving chase, hunting the balls determinedly together for a few moments before splitting up for absolutely no reason whatsoever, as is tradition. Eventually, Tigress caught up to the orbs, which hovered ominously above her in a circular room.

"I suspect you're tired of playing second fiddle to that panda," the ghost said, taking a wild guess.

"Actually, this whole thing is sort of a new development," Tigress reasoned. "So I'm not sure I'm really tired of it."

"His skill is impressive," the ghost went on, "but I can make you more powerful than a thousand Dragon Warriors."

"No you can't," Tigress said. "The whole point is that the Dragon Warrior is the best of the best."

"You're right, I can't," the ghost admitted. "I'm just using you as bait to get the panda to show up."

"Actually, you're not doing that either, really," Tigress pointed out. "Po was already heading here. Whether or not I'm here has no bearing on that."

"Shh," the ghost hissed. "You are falling under my trance."

This time, the ghost was right as, indeed, it looked for a moment that Tigress was falling victim to the influence of Shifu's balls—whatever that was, exactly—but this suspense was brought to an abrupt end well before it began.

"What am I doing?" Tigress asked as Po caught up with her. Nothing was the correct answer.

"Po!" she called, shaking her mind free from the ghost's trance. It is not clear at what point she and Po had become friends again, nor is it really clear why she had called out to him.

"You can't win," the ghost said menacingly.

"Yeah, that's why I'm here," Po replied arrogantly. Unfortunately, in the world of this TV show, his statement was actually true and so not entirely cocky—it was, however, still partially cocky.

So, united again, the warriors proceeded to attack Shifu's balls mercilessly, having little success due to the fact that they were magical flying orbs and not actually enemies.

Ultimately, the balls seemed to grow tired of messing around with the intruders and coalesced somehow into a giant floating pig or something.

"Master Ding!" Tigress exclaimed, taking on Shifu's role of yelling out the names of the villains in shock. "We want the orbs!"

"Not as much as I do," the ghost replied. "I've been waiting for centuries to unleash my wrath on the Valley of Peace. Thanks to you, my time has come."

"Not likely, Ding!" Tigress rebutted. "Your spirit is still trapped in this castle!"

"Yeah, to break free you'd have to posses the body of a living creature," Po said, neglecting to explain how he knew this since it was never mentioned at any point. I suppose it was convenient, though. "Where are you going to get one of those?"

"Wait, if you knew that this whole time," Tigress realized, turning to Po, "then why didn't you say anything about it? If he needs a living creature to be of any consequence, we could've skipped this whole trip and everything would've been fine."

"And miss out on an entire episode alone with you?" Po asked. "Screw that!"

It was too late for screwing, however, as the giant pig took hold of Po through the use of some magic blue stuff (yes, Shifu's balls eject a vague, milky emission that glows in the dark). The panda writhed and struggled against his capturer's hold, moaning in pain for a while before falling lifelessly to the ground, the spirit orbs coming to rest beside him.

"Po!"

Tigress ran over to the fallen warrior, looking positively worried—certainly much more worried than when the shrimp had died, anyway. Perhaps she had remembered that she actually likes Po.

She reached down to check her comrade's pulse and was caught by surprise when he grabbed her arm forcefully.

"Po?"

Letting out a maniacal laugh, the panda rose to his feet, smirking at Tigress before kicking her in the face and knocking her unconscious. This was meant to establish that Po was possessed by an evil spirit, but he had kicked her in the face even harder at the beginning of the episode, so if anything he was being nicer.

* * *

Tigress woke with a start, groggily evaluating her surroundings. Her eyes slowly took in the empty room around her, sweeping across the ground before finally coming to rest on the giant pillar to her left. A similar pillar stood to her right and her arms were chained between them, leaving her completely defenceless.

"Are we already at the scene inside Po's mind?" Tigress asked, eyeing her bindings. "I thought that didn't come until later."

"It doesn't," possessed Po said, stepping out of the darkness. "This is still the real world."

Tigress glanced once again at the kinky chains attached to her arms. "Could've had me fooled."

"I'd forgotten what it was like to be mortal," possessed Po said ponderingly. "It feels…somewhat sillier than I remember."

"That's just Po," Tigress replied, pleased that she had been given the one funny line in the entire episode—perhaps it would make up for the terrible pun coming up later. "Now let him go!"

Possessed Po simply laughed. "While you rot here, I shall wreak horrible vengeance on those who imprisoned me."

"Actually, everyone who imprisoned you is long dead by now," Tigress pointed out. "Except Shifu, but he's getting there in all honesty."

Possessed Po ignored this, laughing again as he turned to make his way through the prison door and out into the frigid air.

Desolate, Tigress hung defeated from her chains. I would like to take this opportunity to give credit where credit is due and admit that this shot is actually very powerful and very well done in the show. Unfortunately, the sombre atmosphere it constructed was promptly ruined by Tigress's subsequent actions.

"No!" she called out determinedly after a long pause, as though only just deciding she should try to do something about her predicament.

She proceeded to struggle fruitlessly against her chains, giving up again a short while later. I would say "A for effort" but, frankly, she hadn't really tried all that hard even.

However, as her dejected gaze rose from her feet, Tigress felt her eyes lock onto Shifu's balls, lying dormant just a few feet away.

"The orbs," the whispered. "It's awfully convenient that Master Ding left them here instead of taking them with him, especially since they're supposed to be the source of his power and the only things that make him even remotely threatening."

Tigress's newfound hope at this development was short-lived, however, as she remembered her past attempt at mental acuity. Her head sagged head in despair: Clearly, she didn't have what it takes to controls Shifu's balls with her mind.

"Come on Tigress," she said, trying to rouse herself—because she totally seems like the kind of person that would talk to herself (and the kind of person who would give up easily). "Concentrate."

And so she did, completely mastering the ability to use the orbs in only a few moments. While implausible, this was at least easier to swallow than Master Ding leaving the balls behind in the first place.

Encouraged by her progress, Tigress immediately used the orbs to break free from her chains, taking them in her hand and making a strange face—instead of an expression of determination or something else reasonable, she actually just looked confused. Also, when I say "immediately", I mean "after first making the orbs shoot around and destroy random things."

* * *

Po stood just outside the entrance to the prison, cracking his neck needlessly.

"And now, to—"

His sentence was cut off as Tigress leapt out from behind him, landing at his feet and baring her teeth.

"Now to what?" she challenged. "Also, you really didn't make it very far in the time you've been gone."

"The spirits orbs?" possessed Po exclaimed, indicating Shifu's balls, which were firmly clasped in Tigress's hand. "Impossible! How?"

"Mental focus is kind of my thing," Tigress said. "I apologize for that line."

"Forgiven," Po shrugged.

"Now let Po go!" she demanded.

"I don't think so!" Ding replied.

Possessed Po lunged at Tigress, striking towards her relentlessly. Despite her humiliating and crushing defeat earlier in the episode, however, Tigress actually managed to deflect these blows effortlessly.

"You cannot defeat me," Master Ding insisted. "I am beyond the Dragon Warrior!"

He made another attempt at attacking Tigress, this time succeeded in stepping on her toes, just like he did to Tai Lung in the first movie. It saddens me to think that, when the writers finally decided to pay homage to the original film, this is the moment they chose to pay tribute to.

"I am in control," possessed Po continued. "I have his skills."

Indeed, Master Ding began to gain ground on Tigress, striking her face, back, and chest—all very Po-like things to do.

"I have his mind!" he exclaimed, striking Tigress in the stomach and sending her flying back.

Tigress returned to her feet, looking around for the spirit orbs that had stopped following her hand around. They had come to rest on the grass a few feet away, dormant again.

Possessed Po reached out to them confidently, attempting to take control of them, but the balls were inert.

"The mind thing?" Tigress said. "Not so good."

"But he's supposed to be intelligent!" Master Ding protested. "That's why his eyes are green—the colour of wisdom!—and that's why he understood the dragon scroll when no one else did! It's a major character point!"

"You clearly don't understand how these episodes work," Tigress remarked.

She closed her eyes in concentration yet again, this time succeeding in not appearing as though she were trying to pass a stool as the orbs lit up once again and flew back into the air.

Realizing what was happening, Master Ding charged at Tigress, jumping blindly towards her just in time to have her strike with the balls. A giant blue shockwave exploded between the two opponents before everything went dark for a moment.

* * *

Tigress looked around her curiously, bowls and axes and vases floating by serenely. She looked up bemusedly and witnessed a collection of dumplings and barrels drifting overhead.

"Where am I?" Tigress asked. "There's no way that axes, barrels, and dumplings are the only things Po thinks about. This can't be his mind."

"Tigress!"

Tigress turned towards the source of the noise and saw Po lying on the floor, bound by thick ropes.

"You're in my mind!" he explained, proving Tigress woefully wrong.

"For someone who complains about things being boring all the time, you don't seem to think about anything very interesting," Tigress said. "You'd think there'd at least be a—wait, why don't I have any clothes on?"

Indeed, the tiger master was completely naked.

"Oh…uh…I guess there just aren't clothes in people's minds?" Po suggested unconvincingly.

"You're wearing clothes," Tigress pointed out.

"Oh…right…uh…" Po trailed off. "Well this is awkward."

"Po, this isn't the time," Tigress reminded him. "Give me my clothes back."

"Fine," Po sighed. "So how did you get in here?"

"Same way as Master Ding," Tigress answered proudly. "Superior mental prowess."

"So you used Shifu's balls?" Po confirmed, unimpressed.

"Yes Po, I used Shifu's balls," Tigress sighed wearily. "Now let's get you free."

Before Tigress could begin undoing the knot, however, she was knocked aside by a random ball of blue stuff. Why she hadn't expected Master Ding to be there and try to stop her is something no one will understand.

Tigress looked up in horror as the giant pig thing came to rest on the ground before her, even larger than he had been earlier and now with bits of electricity sparking around him for some reason.

"Wow, he's big," Po said unnecessarily.

"Nice try," Ding began, "But as you can see, I'm siphoning his very essence as we speak."

"That sounds suspiciously like something you made up just now," Tigress pointed out. "No one said anything about siphoning of essences. What does that even mean, anyway? What the hell is Po's 'essence'?"

"Essence of cockiness," Po answered cheerfully.

"Po, you're fading!" Tigress exclaimed.

Po looked down at his body, whose alpha value was indeed slowly decreasing in what must have been an expensive effect.

"Well, I've been meaning to lose weight, but…"

"Soon, he'll fade completely," Ding said, eloquently expositing every last detail of the plot to ensure no one got lost in its complex web of twists, turns, and made up shit. "Soon, he won't even be a memory in your own mind."

"Po won't be a memory in my mind?" Tigress asked. "How are you going to accomplish that?"

"Uh, I mean he won't even be a memory in his own mind!" Ding-dong corrected.

"That makes even less sense," Po interjected. "How can my mind exist without knowing it exists."

"I'm sure there's an explanation somewhere that makes sense," the pig persisted, "but we don't have the time. There are only three minutes or so left in this episode."

"Really?" Tigress asked. "Wow, this one went by way faster than that clam episode."

"Thank God," Po grunted.

"Well, I guess it's time for my standard 'attack the villain and be taken out in one fell swoop' move," Tigress sighed.

And so, the tiger master lunged dutifully at the giant pig, who proceeded to use the force to shoot lighting at her and send her crashing back to the ground, smoking slightly as though cooked.

Determined not to give up easily this time, Tigress returned to her feet, turning to Shifu's ball-handler and narrowing her eyelids.

"You want to play mind games?" she asked. "I'm your tiger."

"But Tigress, you've never played mind games before!" Po exclaimed. "Also, if you're going to apologize for a line, you should go with that one instead."

Tigress ignored this, raising her hands in front of her as the giant pig called on the force once again. This time, however, Tigress absorbed the lighting in her paws, demonstrating once again that magical spirit ball tricks have a very shallow learning curve, apparently. Despite her impressive new skills, however, she was still no match for the pig and was knocked back to the floor.

"Po," she said, "As much as I hate to admit it, I can't do this alone."

"Why would you hate to admit that?" Po asked. "Doesn't a true warrior know her limits and accept help when she needs it?"

"Po, we're not allowed to seem like we even remotely like each other," Tigress reminded him. "Or at least, I can't seem like I even remotely like you, even though you're my best friend in the second movie."

"But I can't get out of these ropes!" Po said, struggling futilely.

"Yes you can!" Tigress insisted. "It's your mind that's holding you back! Concentrate!"

"That's asking a lot," Po retorted.

"No it's not," Tigress said. "You did it all the time in the first movie. Besides, you're the Dragon Warrior: you can master anything."

"Oh so _now_ this show understands the point of the Dragon Warrior," Po said sarcastically.

Despite this discontinuity, Po did as Tigress told him to, concentrating with all his might. Like Tigress, he quickly managed to master the whole mental acuity thing and broke free from his bonds, restoring his alpha channel in moments. Unlike Tigress, he managed to do this without once looking like he was having a bowel movement.

"I did it!" Po exclaimed gleefully.

"Your colour's coming back!" Tigress indicated, pointing at his stomach.

"It is!" Po said joyfully.

"You go low," Tigress instructed. "I'll go high."

The two warriors proceeded to fight in tandem together, which was honestly a nice break from the usual formula of "everyone else gets their ass handed to them while Po single-handedly saves the day."

As this totally intense battle raged on in his mind, Po's body swayed and tilted outside in reality.

"I've got your body," Po said in Ding's voice. "You'll never take it back!"

"Oh yeah!" Po said in his own voice. "Well now _I've_ got control!"

More noises of struggle were heard before Po spoke again, this time in Tigress's voice.

"I'm in control! I'm—" she stopped for a moment, looking down at herself curiously. "Uh…someone else take control please."

With that, the camera returned to Po's empty mind where Ding was still shooting force lighting at Tigress.

"Po," she said, turning to her companion, "you can control anything in here!"

"You're right!" Po exclaimed, closing his eyes in consternation.

"What are you—seriously?" Tigress's face crumpled in resignation as her clothes disappeared again.

"That's not what you meant?" Po asked innocently.

"Focus, Po!" she said. "Use your noodle!"

"Ouch," Po replied. "I think that pun actually caused me internal haemorrhaging."

In case readers were wondering what the pun was, Po proceeded to attack Master Ding with a literal noodle, tying it around his legs and bringing him to the ground.

"What? You can't defeat me with a noodle," the pig persisted.

"Of course not," Po replied. "I'm going to defeat you with dumplings!"

Indeed, much to the viewers' dismay, Po summoned two giant dumplings out of thin air, hitting the pig with them exactly once before Tigress delivered the finishing blow in the form of a single kick. This kick sent the pig flying off into space, and presumably out of Po's mind, leaving viewers wondering why Tigress hadn't simply done this earlier. (In case anyone is wondering, it is never explained what happened to the pig—not that anyone is likely to really care.)

"I don't suppose that's how I have to leave?" Tigress asked, speaking to Po kindly for once.

"Surprisingly, no," Po said—surprising in the sense that the producers passed up a change to have Tigress suffer another physical beating. "In fact, you don't even have to leave if you don't want to."

As Po raised his eyebrows suggestively, Tigress looked down to see that her clothes had gone missing yet again.

"Um…Po," she began hesitantly. "When I took control, I…uh…you don't happen to keep anything big and bulging in your pants, do you?"

"No," Po replied blankly.

Tigress's eyes went wide for a moment before she shook her head. "Now really isn't the time," she reminded him, as well as herself.

"Alright, alright," Po conceded. "Then you can just use that door."

Right on a cue, a door appeared out of nowhere. Unlike other objects that tended to appear spontaneously in this show, however, this was at least explained by being in Po's mind.

"Nice," Tigress said, placing her hand on Po's shoulder. "By the way, this gesture is just part of the mandatory ship teasing," she clarified. "So don't be surprised when I'm unnecessarily mean to you again later."

With that, she walked through the door and the episode ended.

* * *

Just kidding. Unfortunately.

Returning to the Jade Palace, Tigress carefully placed Shifu's balls back in the unlocked and completely insecure cabinet, closing the glass doors behind them. I was too lazy to research whether or not glass of that kind had been in regular use in China during that time period, but I feel like it probably wasn't.

"I'm sorry Po," Tigress said after a pause. "I should never have let my jealousy get the best of me."

"If we're being completely honest," Po reasoned, "you never should've gotten jealous in the first place."

"Frankly, I never should've been so easily defeated by you either, if you want to take it that far," Tigress said.

"Yeah, and then there's the whole defying Shifu thing," Po added. "And treating me like garbage even though you're supposed to be my friend."

"Well, that's somewhat reasonable given how cocky you are," Tigress pointed out. "Not that I'm particularly lovable with my 'I hate fun' attitude and uncharacteristic sarcasm."

"You know, I'm starting to notice a pattern with these things," Po realized. "Although it's not as consistent as the one where you get the shit kicked out of you for no reason."

"Well I'm sorry anyway," Tigress said.

"I've got to admit," Po conceded, "I could've been a little less cocky."

"You could always stand to be a little less cocky in this show," Tigress reasoned. "But, you have your strengths, and I have mine."

"Yeah, I suppose that's a pretty good moral for a kids' show," Po admitted. "So what exactly are your strengths? I mean, we didn't really seem to find anything that you were better than me at."

"Well…mental focus," Tigress said.

"But I did that just as well as you," Po pointed out. "Arguably better, even."

"Uh…I guess I'm better at being humble?" Tigress offered.

"Uh…sure," Po accepted. "Plus, I guess if it wasn't for you, I would've evaporated in my own head—or, actually I guess I still wouldn't have because you're kind of the one that got us into that whole mess in the first place, but something something make up time!"

Po made to give Tigress a hug, but she stopped him and bowed instead. While this is a reasonable reaction given how big a deal the hugs in the second movie were, it ignores the fact that Tigress has hugged several other people throughout this crappy series, including Po. That, and Tigress's face was unnecessarily angry while she bowed, which I feel must be disrespectful somehow.

"Anyway," Po went on. "Everything worked out, and Shifu never discovered that his children were playing with his balls."

At that exact moment, Po collided with Shifu, who had clearly appeared out of nowhere since he had certainly not been there before.

"Silver-painted nuts?" Shifu asked, his voice dripping with disdain as he held up one of Po's impostors from earlier.

Po and Tigress simply looked speechless for a moment before the former piped up:

"Uh, is no one going to make a joke about how Shifu didn't notice that his balls were missing because there were nuts in his drawers?"

* * *

"Well," Po said, wiping the floor as punishment even though the Jade Palace employs at least a few dozen servants for such mundane tasks as cleaning. "Since we have some time here, maybe you could help me with my mental acuity skills! Also, why was I punished when this whole thing was quite literally your fault and all I did was help you fix it?"

"Sure, I'll help you," Tigress agreed mischievously, clearly forgetting—like Po—that he had managed just fine earlier. "How about an awareness lesson?"

"Oooh, that sounds great!" Po answered. "Even though you kind of sucked at that back in the prison and only survived because I was aware enough to save you."

Ignoring his last sentence, Tigress took her cloth and used it to trip Po onto his back.

"Lesson one," she said, proving once and for all that she was just as capable as Po of being obnoxious and unlikable. "When you least expect it, expect it."

"What kind of nonsensical advice is that?" Po demanded. "Also, you've gone back to hating me again before the next episode has even started? That's a new record."

"Just be glad there weren't any shrimp or goat men this time," Tigress responded.

"So, you got the shit kicked out of you just for the sake of appeasing the producers' strange fetish, we revived some ancient enemy from long ago through implausible means, we defeated said enemy by learning a supposedly complex skill in a short period of time, we squeezed in a horrible pun that some viewers are still recovering from, numerous things fell on you, and everything ultimately went back to normal—and all while ensuring we never once acted even remotely like the friends we're supposed to be," Po summarized. "Sounds like we're almost ready to wrap this episode up!"

"Can we have a nice, heart-warming ending this time like the last parody did?" Tigress pleaded.

"I think that one was mostly there to get the rotten seafood taste out of everyone's mouths," Po replied.

"Actually, I have to hand it to this episode," Tigress conceded begrudgingly. "It wasn't nearly as bad as those other ones. No vomit-inducing love stories, no annoying new characters, no overly convoluted villainous plots—they even had someone else besides you mess everything up this time!"

"Yeah, and this episode had a lot of you in it, which is always a plus," Po agreed. "But isn't this episode completely unnecessary after Chain Reaction? You know, in which you hated me but were forced to set aside your differences in order to work together with me to defeat an enemy and ultimately accept me for who I am?"

"I suppose so," Tigress said. "And that episode also had a lot of things falling on me and hitting me in the face, now that you mention it."

"Except that _that_ episode had us acting like friends by the end of it," Po continued. "This one never came close to that. You were basically mean the whole time, including right now."

"So the writers don't care in the slightest about continuity then," Tigress shrugged. "What else is new?"

"I love you," Po said offhandedly.

"I know," Tigress muttered. "Or did you forget the whole clothing incident?"

"But you didn't hear me say _why_ I love you," Po pointed out.

"Can we not do this?" Tigress asked. "I mean, it was cute the last time, but wouldn't you rather have a potential relationship between us be explored thoughtfully and tastefully in one of the movies instead of cheesily and hastily in one of these terrible episodes?"

"Well, we have to end on something," Po reasoned.

"Alright, go ahead," Tigress said, far from excited. "Why do you love me?"

"For the a lot of the same reasons Shifu does," Po answered, smirking.

Tigress looked over at him, raising an eyebrow.

"Oh, we knew you were hiding behind that pillar," Po explained. "You didn't actually think Shifu was telling me the meaning of life, did you?"

"So…you two were talking about me?" Tigress breathed.

"Yep," Po nodded. "How's that for a twist ending?"

"Wait, my best friend and my father love me in similar ways?" Tigress asked. "That sounds like it could be a little weird."

"I said a lot of the same reasons, not all of them," Po defended.

"So you and Shifu discussed reasons why you love me?" Tigress repeated, becoming dubious. "The meaning of life thing sounds more believable."

"Hey, clams can fly and wield swords in this universe," Po reminded her. "I just thought you seemed upset that I was kicking your face in all the time, so I talked to Shifu about it and one thing led to another."

"So what reasons did he say?" Tigress asked, exploring the moment from earlier that the TV show had wisely decided to ignore for fear of actually introducing depth to the plot—not that it could really be trusted to handle the idea well anyway.

"Hey, that's private," Po said. "That conversation stays between me and Shifu."

Tigress looked disappointed at this, but Po went on after a pause.

"Of course, if you were to, I don't know, enter my mind or something, then I wouldn't be able to stop you from finding out, now would I?" Po wondered aloud.

Tigress smiled. "So we're going to do this whole thing again?"

"Why not?" Po asked. "The cabinet still doesn't have a lock on it, the writers have repeated an episode once before, and I'm always happy for an excuse to take your clothes off again. Let's do this!"


	5. The Ladies of the Shade

**The Ladies of the Shade**

_Author's Note: I had thought I wasn't going to do any more of these, but someone suggested doing The Ladies of the Shade and, upon watching it again and realizing it didn't contain any horrible puns, I simply couldn't hold back. Enjoy!_

* * *

Po popped his head through the entrance to his father's noodle shop inquisitively, his curiosity piqued by the commotion of maybe three villagers letting out sounds of awe outside.

"Hey, what's all the fuss…?"

He trailed off as his eyes locked onto a group of four ambiguously-gendered snow leopards, each of whom was twirling a umbrella and swinging around what can only be called a briefcase. Perhaps they were travelling salesmen.

"Woah," Po gasped in wonder, watching the salesman prance about and spin their umbrellas.

"Oh Po," Mr. Ping said, appearing out of nowhere, as is customary. "It's so beautiful!"

"Yeah," Po breathed. "Who knew 3D models could be rotated around an axis like that?"

"I'm not talking about the dancing!" Mr. Ping exclaimed. "I'm talking about the potential customers!"

"You know, there was a time you used to care about things besides money," Po said. "Like me, for instance."

"Oh Po," Mr. Ping scoffed, "you and I both know the writers of this show can only handle one personality trait per character."

"Well, yeah," Po conceded, "but still, they could've gone with the 'loving father' trait instead of taking the 'cheap bastard' route."

"Love is hard," Mr. Ping said simply—and all too appropriately for this episode. "Now get out there and advertise my shop!"

At this, Mr. Ping handed his son the famed noodle cart and hung a sign around his neck.

"Uh…as much as I'd love to help…" Po began slowly, "I'm kind of, you know…the most important Kung Fu warrior in the history of China. I should probably be training or helping people or something."

"Training? Helping people?" Mr. Ping asked. "You don't do those things in this TV show! All you do is find new ways to complain about achieving your life dream, make stupid decisions that put the entire country in danger somehow, and bash Tigress's head against things."

"True," Po admitted, "especially that last one for some reason; but still, it doesn't really make sense for an accomplished Kung Fu master to carry a sign around all day."

"Oh, I see how it is then," Mr. Ping began dramatically, feigning hurt quite well for someone who clearly has no emotions in this series—besides greed, that is. "After all I've done for you, you're too busy to help me out? That's fine! I'll make do! If the shop closes, I'll find work! Maybe sweeping the dust from the corners of my broken heart!"

Po frowned, not believing for a moment that this pale copy of his father had had a heart to begin with.

"Fine, I'll do it," he said resignedly, if only to shut the goose up.

"Great!" Mr. Ping exclaimed, confirming Po's skepticism as he handed him yet another sign, this time shaped like an arrow. "You spin it!" he explained, "People love that! And here are some free noodle coupons!"

"Wait, free noodles?" Po asked in disbelief. "That doesn't sound like a sound marketing strategy."

"Oh, not free noodles!" Mr. Ping laughed, pushing the panda on his way. "Free coupons! And don't forget to smile!"

So, armed with exactly too many signs, Po made his way over to the small arch bridge at the center of the village to join the small crowd that had gathered there. Apparently having nothing better to do despite being an accomplished Kung Fu master, he watched in amazement with the other villagers as the four leopard salesmen continued to demonstrate their best dance moves, most of which involved spinning bodies or spinning umbrellas. Some even involved spinning bodies _and_ spinning umbrellas. Truly, it was a sight to behold.

After a few seconds of this impressive display, and without any explanation whatsoever, the four leopards jumped into the air and flew over to Po—a feat rendered uninteresting by the fact that basically everyone in this show can fly, including seafood.

Using their umbrellas to land gracefully, the two leopards—as there were indeed only two leopards now—proceeded to twirl around for a bit before stopping and looking at the panda expectantly.

"Oh, I'm not very good," Po said hesitantly, somehow inferring that the leopards' fraction-of-a-second pause meant they wanted him to dance. "Also, didn't you guys use to be carrying briefcases?"

Indeed, much like the other two leopards, the briefcases were nowhere to be seen. Instead of answering this pertinent question, however, the remaining leopards simply stared at Po some more before the panda shrugged and gave in to their demands. Perhaps he was worried they would make him disappear too.

So, Po proceeded to use the fast reflexes, strong muscles, and precision balance his extensive Kung Fu training lent him to hip thrust impressively for a few moments before somehow managing to faceplant. This inexplicable failure did nothing to offend the two leopards, however, as they simply helped him back to his feet and danced sporadically with him for a while before returning to the arch bridge from before, magically turning back into four leopards in the process.

"Wow, that was great!" Po exclaimed, clapping energetically with the rest of the easily-impressed audience around him. "We almost never get visits from travelling dancing magician salesmen!"

At this undeserved praise, the leopards bowed appreciatively, one leopard in particular looking especially flattered as she did so. Bafflingly, she was not the leopard that later develops a romantic interest in Po and so there was no real reason for the animators to single her out—except, perhaps, to have her look up in shock!

"Thief!" the leopard cried, pointing out an ox that had somehow managed to appear out of nowhere and slip to the front of the crowd unnoticed in the span of perhaps three seconds despite being taller than everyone else and thus easily spotted. "Stop him!"

Crumpling his face in determination, Po leapt into action, immediately giving chase to the bandit whose only crime was finding the missing briefcases. Seeing his charge flee by foot, the panda took wisely to the rooftops, skilfully and pointlessly jumping from building to building as he ran in a circle only to return to the exact same point from which he had started. For some reason, however, the bandit also converged on this point, and so made it appear that our glorious hero had arrived just in time to stop the would-be robber.

"Hey, where are you going?" Po asked cockily, pointing his sign to the right. "Jail's that way!"

Angered, the ox attacked, once again demonstrating that every minor villain in this show somehow thinks they stand a chance of defeating Po even though he's nearly as invincible as he is cocky in this TV series.

So, with that baffling decision, the scene broke into a fight sequence that somehow managed to be even less interesting than the erratic dancing from earlier. At one point, for instance, Po flung his dad's coupons at his assailant, which—in addition to being implausibly effective at neutralizing the ox—made the onlookers gasp in amazement, including Mr. Ping himself for some reason. I guess he really does like coupons. (For pacing reasons, I'll neglect to comment on the fact that every nameless thief in this series always ends up being an ox because the writers have already established that they don't mind using lazy stereotypes).

So, emerging victorious from the severely underwhelming battle, Po allowed his defeated foe to flee instead of actually imprisoning him, as is tradition. He then returned the stolen briefcases to the snow leopards—the two he had recovered, that is. The other two briefcases were still inexplicably missing.

"Thank you so much," one of the leopards said appreciatively, perhaps the one who falls in love with Po later. It's hard to tell. "This is everything we own."

"Oh that?" Po asked dismissively, acting humble for perhaps the first time in his TV career. "Pfft, it was nothing. Just part of the whole Dragon Warrior job description."

"You're the Dragon Warrior?" a leopard with a blue shirt asked, bowing. "It's the honour of a thousand lifetimes to be in your presence!"

"Woah, that's a long time!" Po exclaimed, getting an early start on his stupid line quota. "Also, how come everyone in this show knows who the Dragon Warrior is but no one knows what he looks like?"

"We are the Ladies of the Shade," blue shirt explained, ignoring Po's question and taking on the role of chief expositor for this episode. "I am Su," she said, "and these two are the twins, who apparently don't have names."

She indicated the two leopards to her left, who did indeed look the same, if only because all four of the leopards were clearly the exact same model rendered with different shirts—except of course for blue shirt lady herself, who had been scaled up slightly to imply that she was older.

"And this adorable little lotus flower is known as Song," blue shirt continued, pushing the final leopard girl towards him.

"Hey, I'm Po," Po said, introducing himself before pointing to his right. "And this is my dad!"

Indeed, Mr. Ping appeared out of nowhere again to smile. This was equal parts convenient and unnecessary as none of the leopards ever speak to Mr. Ping and therefore there was no reason whatsoever for him to be introduced.

Sensing that the audience would be reasonably distracted by this, blue shirt lady took this opportunity to hold a secret conversation behind her umbrella with one of the other leopards.

"Song," she whispered urgently, helpfully letting the viewers know which of the completely identical leopards she was talking to. "We've got to get into the Jade Palace. I want that Dragon Chalice!"

"What's so special about the Dragon Chalice?" Song asked curiously. "Does it have special properties? Is it valuable?"

"No, and no," blue shirt answered.

"Then why do you want it so much?" Song persisted.

"We're the new characters in this episode," blue shirt explained patiently. "Therefore, it is required by contract that we be secretly evil, and Dragon Chalice sounds about as made-up as anything else, so we're going to steal it!"

"I see," Song replied, unimpressed.

"I need you to get the panda to say yes," blue shirt continued.

"Yes to what?" Song asked. "I'm not really clear on what your plan is here."

Blue lady sighed. "Get chummy with the panda and get him to invite us into the Jade Palace so we can steal the thing the writers made up for this episode and establish ourselves as the villains."

"See, was that so hard?" Song asked. "Why couldn't you have said something logical like that in the first place?"

"Stop poking holes in things!" blue shirt hissed. "We're only four minutes into this episode—there's no time for arguing. Do you think you can handle him?"

"As long as I don't have to pick him up," Song answered, blissfully unaware that she had been awarded the one funny line in the entire episode.

"Po," Song sang flirtatiously, sliding up to the panda who had neither moved nor noticed that she and blue shirt had been whispering behind an umbrella. "Do you think you could show me around the village?"

"Sure!" Po exclaimed obliviously. "I'd love to show you around!"

Song offered her hand to him but Po, ever clueless, ignored it and ran on ahead of her.

"Come on!" he called.

Confused by the panda's seeming lack of interest in her despite being much more attractive than the goat man from the earlier episode, Song followed her charge resignedly. As she did so, the camera switched to blue shirt's face as she grinned mischievously. Since the audience was already aware of the leopards' evil intent, this was entirely unnecessary; however, it was not nearly as unnecessary as the image of Mr. Ping in the background as he attempted to spin the noodle shop sign himself only to have it smack him hard in the neck and knock him unconscious. I suppose this served as a warning to other characters that none were beyond the writers' degrading reach.

* * *

Po proceeded to show Song around the village, remaining oblivious to her advances at every turn and making sure she didn't miss out on any of the only three interesting locations it apparently contained.

He began, of course, by taking her to a merchant that sold action figures—action figures that looked suspiciously like the ones he was supposed to have meticulously carved himself by hand and that, thus, were one of a kind. When Song seemed unimpressed by these paradoxes, Po demonstrated for her by smashing a Tigress figure and a Monkey figure together in a way that was totally not childlike at all. On the plus side, it was probably the nicest Po has ever been to Tigress in the history of the show.

Seeing that his demonstration was failing to capture Song's interest, Po next took her to his dad's noodle shop where they shared a bowl of noodles together—a strange thing for two people who just met to do, but less strange than Mr. Ping being crushed by a sign. Seizing the opportunity, Song attempted to use these shared noodles to recreate the famous scene from the Lady and the Tramp. Her efforts, however, merely ended in Po nearly eating her head, which I'll admit was refreshingly humorous compared to everything else up until that point.

Still determined to win her over, Po ended the day by pushing Song down the Jade Palace steps on a wok against her will. I don't think anything more needs to be said about that. For the first time that day, however, Song actually seemed to enjoy this and even smiled genuinely at Po, revealing that she was suddenly infatuated with him—because if Tigress can fall in love with a shrimp just by watching it flip Po onto his back, anything goes.

* * *

Their tour of the village complete, Po and Song walked romantically through the bamboo forest together, the latter taking the opportunity to hand Po a scroll on which she had made a small drawing.

"A heart!" Po exclaimed, accepting the scroll. "I mean, love wasn't associated with the heart in ancient China, this symbol certainly wouldn't have been in use at the time, and I don't see why you would feel the need to waste an entire scroll on a stupid drawing, but wow!"

"Do you like it?" Song asked. "It took me a whole thirty seconds to draw."

"I love it!" Po exclaimed. "And wait until you see this!"

He turned away from her, scribbling secretively for a moment before returning the scroll to her with two more lines drawn on it. Since this had taken him only three seconds, he was clearly a much more skilled artist than she was.

Song looked at the drawing bemusedly. "It looks like your—"

Song looked up to see that Po was bending over, demonstrating that his ass was, indeed, shaped like a heart in this show (you're welcome to verify for yourself that it is not heart-shaped in the movies). At this revelation, Song giggled and smiled in a way that suggested she was blushing profusely—because if there's one thing that is guaranteed to get someone hot and steamy, it's showing them that your ass is shaped like a heart. I suppose it's still a better premise than Twilight, at least.

"This has been a really fun day, Po," Song breathed contentedly.

"No!" Po said, elbowing her good-naturedly.

"Yes it has!" Song insisted, punching him back playfully.

"Oh stop it!" Po joked, pushing Song with enough force to throw her to the ground. Surprisingly, he seemed to actually feel bad about this: "Oh! Sorry!"

"Wow, Po; you're awfully nice to me," Song said, laughing appreciatively and getting back up. "You're usually a lot rougher than that with Tigress and you never apologize to her—and you've even stopped being cocky for a whole five minutes!"

"I know!" Po exclaimed. "It's almost like I'm a real person in this episode instead of the one-dimensional Mary Sue I normally am!"

Song's smiled, but her expression faltered slightly as she remembered the task blue shirt had given her.

"Po," she began hesitantly, "there's something I have to tell you…"

"Go ahead! You can tell me anything!" Po assured her. "We're like best friends now!"

"Well, we've only actually known each other for about thirty minutes or so," Song pointed out reasonably. "So I don't know about that…besides, I thought Tigress was your best friend?"

"My best friend changes each episode," Po explained. "Once it was Monkey, once it was Mantis, once it was Viper…whatever's convenient to the writers at the time."

"No, I meant in reality," Song clarified. "Like, in the movies."

"Oh, I don't like to talk about movie Tigress," Po said. "It makes me feel homesick."

"Uh, okay…" Song replied uncertainly. "Well, anyway, I wanted to say—"

"You're, like, the first girl I've ever been best friends with!" Po interrupted pointlessly.

"Uh…again, Tigress?" Song repeated. "And Viper is reasonably close with you too."

"Song, listen," Po began, levelling with her. "The writers of this show refuse to let Tigress and I so much as be polite to each other. Heck, their favourite pastime is watching me smash her head against things; there's no way they're ever going to put us together—even as the best friends we're supposed to be—and I've come to accept that finally. I know now that I am doomed to forever be paired with shallow, hastily thrown-together characters whose sole purpose in life is advancing the writers' lame plot. Sure, the so-called romances that result are always somewhere between forced and vomit-inducing, but I've learned to accept my place in life, just as Tigress has accepted hers as chief punching bag."

Song looked deeply disturbed by this, but Po wasn't finished.

"In this episode, for instance, that shallow character is you," he said frankly. "And don't get me wrong, you're still an undeveloped new character who's only here to create a conflict—and the fact that you're physically identical to every single one of the other leopards in this series, including the random cat bandits that show up from time to time but are never introduced, is an all new level of laziness for this show—but somehow there's something different about you. When you're around, I'm not nearly as cocky as usual. When you're around, I'm actually nice and marginally likeable. When you're around, no one makes sarcastic remarks about my weight or my lack of intelligence. You're quite literally the best thing that has ever happened to me in this show!"

Song wasn't sure how to take this backhanded compliment. "Uh, that's…"

"I mean, you're no Tigress," Po admitted. "You aren't always watching my back and looking out for me like she is; you don't stand by my side no matter what the cost like she does; you weren't there to comfort me in my time of need and emotional instability like she was; and whereas the time she first accepted me as a friend is something I will always cherish as one of my biggest triumphs, I'll be lucky if I remember you ever existed once this episode is over; but still, despite all of that, you're clearly the best I'm ever going to get in this series. You're someone who actually acts like my friend for once, and our relationship's development was practically poetic by this show's usual standards. Failing that, at least you're way hotter and way less annoying than that goat girl from earlier."

"Yes, I like you too, Po," Song said, trying desperately to get back to her original confession before the panda's speech could get any more depressing. "Which is why I can't stay."

"What!?" Po exclaimed, his mind already turning anxiously to frightening thoughts of goat girls and painful memories of Tigress's strong arms around him. "Why!?"

"About our dance troupe…" Song began slowly. "We're actually here to—"

"Oh there you two lovebirds are!"

Po and Song's conversation was jarringly interrupted as the blue-shirted leopard popped into existence suddenly behind them, appearing quite literally out of nowhere and marking the most implausibly convenient entrance of a character in the history of the series.

"Ha ha, 'lovebirds,'" Po laughed, proving he was still completely oblivious to Song's raging boner for him despite the conversation they had been having only ten seconds ago. "Also, where the fuck did you come from?"

"So, Song," blue shirt intoned, ignoring Po's extremely logical question. "Have you asked him yet?"

"Asked me what?" Po butted-in.

"You didn't get him to say yes?" blue shirt asked angrily.

"You do know it's been, like, half an hour tops, right?" Song asked.

"Also, I can totally hear everything you guys are saying," Po added.

"Ugh, forget it," blue shirt scoffed, demonstrating even less patience than Po normally possesses. "Leave this to me."

She turned to Po and presented him with her best sad face, which looked suspiciously like someone had smacked her in the face with a shovel.

"It's just that the Jade Palace is so big," she began, correct so far, "and the sad reality of it is: we have no place to stay."

"I'm not making the connection between those two sentences," Po deadpanned. "And I was able to somehow infer the meaning of a 0.25 second delay, so that probably says something about your brilliant plan."

"Well you see, we once lived in a place darkened with evil," blue shirt began dramatically by way of explanation. "We spent—"

"Nope," Po interrupted, raising his hands impedingly. "Stop right there. I refuse to listen to another 'a long, long time ago' story. Not ever again."

"Uh…" blue shirt seemed unsure how to respond for a moment before shrugging and going with it. "The thing is, we have no place to stay for the night, and poor Song is so frightened by the dark."

"Wait, she's afraid of the dark?" Po asked in genuine surprise. "How old is she?"

"It doesn't matter," blue shirt said dismissively. "Can you help us?"

"Well, I am the Dragon Warrior," Po began, as if he ever let anyone forget it. "I mean, I do help people—in theory, anyway—and Song _is_ a person, assuming clones count as people…what the heck? You ladies are invited to stay at the Jade Palace, even though we don't actually have any extra bedrooms or anything!"

"Oh how wonderful!" blue shirt said with obvious glee. "Please allow us to show our thanks with a personal dance for you and the Furious Five!"

As if on cue, the other two leopards that had been completely forgotten until now suddenly appeared out of thin air, much the way their leader had. No, their presence did not serve a purpose.

"Sure! That sounds great!" Po accepted happily. "I can't see any reason not to trust you! I mean, it's not like new characters have a 90% chance of being evil in this show or anything!"

"And it's not like 90% of these episodes revolve around you making a bad decision and messing everything up somehow either!" Song added, taking on the mantle of pointing things out in Tigress's absence.

* * *

The Furious Five watched with extremely unimpressed expressions as the Ladies of the Shade put on their most daring performance yet in the Hall of Heroes, proving that they at least possessed better judgement than the other villagers.

"Shifu's going to love having strangers in the Jade Palace," Mantis said sarcastically.

"What are you talking about? We have strangers over nearly every episode," Po scoffed. "And half of the time they just waltz right on in without anyone noticing until it's too late. Kind of makes you wonder how we're all still alive."

"Regardless," Mantis maintained, "Shifu is never happy with anything you do in this show, and this won't be an exception."

"Mantis, it's our job to help people," Po reminded him, a statement that would've been more effective if the panda weren't so infuriatingly selfish in this TV series.

"Po, what exactly do you know about these dancing ladies?" Tigress asked suspiciously.

"That they're ladies," Po answered, still fighting to reach his stupidity quota. "And they dance."

"So you invited total strangers into the Jade Palace?" she confirmed.

"Tigress, there's no need to be uncharacteristically jealous," Po assured her. "I made it quite clear that Song can never replace you in my heart, even though you're going to be really mean to me in a few minutes."

"It's not that," Tigress said calmly, confident in her ability to be more interesting than anyone the writers could possibly throw together, even at her most hormonal and sarcastic. "It just probably wasn't a good idea for you to invite people you don't even know into the Hall of Heroes. I feel I'm being pretty reasonable for once."

"I suppose you are," Po admitted, "but still, they had a sad 'a long, long time ago' story. I couldn't say no to that!"

"Well I don't trust them," Tigress snarled.

"You don't trust anyone," Monkey said incorrectly.

"What?" Tigress replied. "I trust all of you not to accidentally kill me or drop me from a bridge when we fight together; and I trust Po enough to let him lead us even though I have way more experience and am better at most things than him."

"In the movies, sure," Monkey shrugged. "Here, though, you just think everything's a trap."

"Yeah," Po corroborated. "And yet, whenever you turn out to be right, you still manage to get your ass kicked—which, now that I think about it, is actually every single time."

"Yep," Viper sighed. "Teaching kids everywhere that paranoia pays off."

"Well, I suppose the writers gave me at least one positive trait in this series, then," Tigress shrugged. "In addition to maintaining my sexiness, of course."

"Sexiness?" Mantis asked incredulously. "Not with that voice they didn't."

Tigress had no time to defend her sexy self, however, as the performers—who had done a very poor job of maintaining their audience's interest so far—employed the subtle technique of stealing something while it was hidden behind one of their umbrellas (I'd also like to point out that the briefcases have entirely gone missing again).

Not fooled by this pathetic attempt at stealth, Tigress called out the dancers on their robbery attempt.

"Thieves!" she yelled, pointing at blue shirt in particular.

Conveniently, at this exact moment, the stolen object fell from blue shirt's grasp and clattered loudly on the ground, making sure to roll into plain sight. It should be noted that this object was presumably the famed Dragon Chalice even though it was clearly a vase.

Having all the evidence they needed, the Furious Five leapt into action, leaving a stunned Po behind as he grappled with the far from surprising revelation that the girl he hardly knew was not trustworthy after all. It was almost as though he had learned nothing from his last experience with a "girl" he had hardly known.

The battle that then ensued was utterly legendary in the sense that it actually didn't make the Furious Five look like complete pushovers for once, and the dancing leopards quickly realized that they were no match for six highly-skilled Kung Fu warriors after all. Before they could be apprehended, however, they blasted their opponents with a purple gas that sprung from the tips of their umbrellas somehow, obscuring them from view.

Faltering only for a moment, Po and the Furious Five leapt into the purple cloud, letting out sounds of struggle as they took hold of anything and everything they came into contact with. When the dust finally settled, it was revealed that the leopards had, in fact, all somehow vanished, leaving our heroes unwittingly wrestling each other on the ground.

"Well this is awkward," Mantis observed.

"Wait," Viper started, looking confused. "If they could just disappear like that, why didn't they do so sooner?"

"Also, how come none of us could recognize each other's bodies?" Po asked. "I mean, Mantis, Monkey, Crane, and Viper aren't even remotely shaped like leopards, and I've felt Tigress up more than enough times in this series to recognize her chest by now."

"And there's certainly no mistaking Po's heart-shaped ass," Tigress agreed, having had lots of experience with Po's ass as well, most of which involved being underneath it.

"Well, that's avoiding the even more pressing question of how six skilled martial-artists such as ourselves could possibly end up in a situation like this in the first place given that we fight together all the time," Crane pointed out. "Regardless of how intimate Po is with Tigress's ample chest muscles, this really shouldn't have been possible."

"Also, am I the only one bothered by their ability to disappear somehow?" Monkey asked, changing the subject before it became to erotic. "Like, does it just come for free when you buy the 'appear out of nowhere' potion?"

"You probably get it from the same place that sells vanishing briefcases, spiked umbrellas, and purple smoke," Mantis conjectured.

"Still easier to swallow than flying, sword-fighting clams, I guess," Tigress shrugged, receiving a murmur of approval from the others.

"So…are we going to untangle ourselves now?" Po asked, wondering why they were still lying on the floor. "I mean, orgy Thursday isn't until tomorrow…"

At this, the Furious Five mumbled half-hearted agreements and returned slowly to their feet, none of them all that interested in continuing with the episode.

Shortly after righting herself, Tigress drew a deep breath and summoned her most disproportionately angry voice.

"Nice work, Po," she drawled sarcastically. "What were you thinking!?"

"You know, I'm not sure if I should be upset that you're yelling at me or glad that you sound angrier than that time I killed your boyfriend."

"Please don't bring that up," Mantis said, retching.

"The leopards said they needed a place to stay!" Po defended.

"Po," Crane explained patronizingly, as though any explanation were necessary, "they _lied_ to you."

"And they got away with Shifu's Dragon Chalice," Viper added. "Oogway gave that to him."

"Woah, since when does Oogway give people priceless Kung Fu artefacts as presents?" Po asked bemusedly.

"We have to get that chalice back," Tigress said, ignoring her friend. "I say 'we', but we all know that means 'Po'."

"You can count on that!" Po exclaimed, his cockiness returning with alarming speed now that Song was gone. "I'll teach those ladies a lesson!"

"Crane and I will go too," Viper sighed. "Even though, ultimately, Po will basically save the day single-handedly as always and our presence will have been completely unnecessary."

"Fine," Tigress said. "We'll square away the hall before Shifu gets back. Luckily we've had a lot of practice at cleaning up Po's messes."

At this comment, Po looked incredibly sad and hurt, yet again leaving viewers wondering why he had spent all day with the random leopard girl he had just met if Tigress's approval was so much more valuable to him than hers.

"Ouch, that was pretty mean even for TV Tigress," Mantis observed, recovering after a short stupor. "You know you're supposed to be his best friend, right?"

"Well, she does have a point," Crane agreed. "Po does tend to mess everything up all the time, which is quite a feat given the godlike powers he apparently has in this series."

"Still, I don't think having to pick up a couple of knocked-over pedestals warrants that kind of reaction," Mantis persisted, turning to Tigress. "This isn't some sort of jealously thing, is it?"

"Well it's not fair!" Tigress blurted out, dropping all pretence. "Song is literally identical to all of the other leopards in this series and she gets to spend most of an episode with him! All I get to do is yell at him once and then sweep the floor!"

"Yeah, I suppose you're right," Po admitted. "For a show that's supposed to center around my life at the Jade Palace, you guys don't seem to get much screen time."

"It's almost as though the writers watched the first movie, noticed we don't get many lines, and then decided that _that_ was the key to its success," Viper said dejectedly.

"That actually makes a lot of sense, now that you mention it!" Mantis gasped.

"My life makes sense now!" Crane exclaimed.

"Alright, alright; I think we can all agree that this show would be better if there were a lot more Tigr—" Po faltered slightly. "Uh…a lot more of the Furious Five in it, but arguing about it like this isn't going to change things, right?"

"Oh, just take your sidekicks and go!" Tigress yelled, still fuming at how little she was featured in this series despite being the most popular character in the whole franchise next to Po. "And if you like that girl so much, why don't you marry her? Oh, I forgot: everyone you try to marry turns out to just be using you!"

"Are you sure we have to go?" Crane asked, turning to Viper. "This seems like a lot more fun to watch."

"Shifu's supposed to be back any minute," Viper reminded him, sounding as though she were motivating herself just as much as her peer. "Knowing this show, he'll probably conveniently arrive as soon as we get back, so we should probably be going."

With that, Po and his sidekicks of the week took their leave, continuing the show's tradition of avoiding having all six warriors in the same place at the same time as much as possible.

* * *

"This scene serves literally no purpose," Po said. "Can we skip it?"

"Anything if it means not having to listen to you fill your stupidity quota," Crane replied.

* * *

Po hung from Crane's leg with Viper wrapped around his midsection (it makes sense given the context of the previous scene…sort of). As Crane flew effortlessly despite the immense weight he was carrying, the warriors came across a small village enclosed within a tall wooden fence.

"It's the Ladies of the Shade!" Po exclaimed, seeming very certain of his diagnosis despite the lack of any evidence to support it. "Also, did it just change from day to night?"

"If we just storm in there, we'll never find the chalice!" Crane said.

"Why not?" Po asked. "It's a tiny, enclosed compound with like ten small huts in it. How hard can it be to search it all?"

"Yeah," Viper agreed. "And if we had brought the others with us too instead of insisting on splitting up like we always do, we'd just have to search two huts each and we'd be done."

"Hey, it's not my fault my line doesn't make any sense," Crane defended. "The writers needed an excuse for the dumb shit that's about to happen in the next scene, so there it is."

* * *

Po approached the wooden fence surrounding the ladies' compound, outside which stood an ox guard that looked suspiciously like the briefcase thief from the first scene. (By "suspiciously," I mean that the animators clearly recycled the model from before, not that this was literally the same ox; that would require more forethought than the writers are capable of).

As Po neared the fence, his face hidden by Crane's hat, the guard lowered his spear threateningly.

"Halt!" he demanded. "What do you want?"

"Hellooooo!" Po sang, moving Crane's hat to reveal that he had covered his face in makeup for some reason—obviously to appear female, of course, but why he wanted this was not clear. Then again, seeing as he was also holding Viper like an umbrella and wearing Crane like a backpack, neither of which seemed to come off as strange to the ox, I suppose the makeup was the least confusing aspect of the scene.

"This'll never work," Crane mumbled. If only that were true, Crane; if only that were true.

"Well hello," the ox said, sounding immediately infatuated, because that's how the writers think love works. Whatever floats his boat, I suppose.

"I'm just a wandering parasol lady hoping to join the Ladies of the Shade with their wonderful merriment and dancing skills!" Po proclaimed shrilly, and yet with a voice less annoying than Crane's.

"You know, I've never seen a parasol lady quite like you before," the ox said, unaware that, indeed, no one has.

"Oh, thank you," Po replied, clearly flattered.

"Finally, a lady my size!" the ox proclaimed.

"Oh, you're so silly!" Po exclaimed, smashing Viper against the ox's head, injuring both in the process.

When this attempted assault had no effect, Po tried again and again, repeatedly bashing Viper mercilessly against the ox's head and proving that he was apparently extremely abusive to every female in his life, not just Tigress.

"Hey, wait a minute!" the ox demanded, seemingly realizing that it was not normal for dancing parasol ladies to beat people with snakes.

"Sorry," Po said, dropping his shrill voice and replacing it with his annoying voice. "No can do!"

Po proceeded to use actual Kung Fu this time to subdue the ox, finding it much more effective than the snake bludgeoning from before. Why he had bothered with whole earlier charade if he was just going to break his disguise immediately anyway will forever remain a mystery, much like the show's success and the fact that the scene had changed from night to day again.

"Woah, that was awesome!" Po said, apparently not above complimenting himself on his fighting skills. "We're like a dynamic duo—only with three, and while pretending to be a lady!"

"I'm pretending to be a backpack and you're using Viper like a nightstick," Crane reminded him. "Why are we even here?"

Po ignored this and instead proceeded to sneak into the ladies' compound, initially attempting to be stealthy in his infiltration rather than just walking in casually, which once again left viewers questioning the point of his disguise.

This question was answered, however, as Po suddenly and inexplicably dropped the stealth act in favour of being as noticeable as possible, striding into the compound's center and waving unabashedly to every single leopard he saw. Invariably, these leopards responded with indifference rather than the correct reaction of disgust.

Then, just as Po began to grow quite proud of his lazy but apparently highly successful disguise, he stopped with a gasp.

"It's song!" he said, pointing out one of the leopards amongst the crowd.

"How can you tell?" Crane asked. "They all look the same."

"She has a different shirt," Po explained. "I think."

As Po made to intercept his ex-friend, Crane made a half-hearted attempt to keep him on track.

"Po, we have to get the chalice," he reminded him.

"She gave me owie on my heart," Po returned.

"I regret volunteering for this, suddenly," Viper said.

Po paid her no mind, rushing over to confront Song only to be stopped by two identical leopards—uh…two _other_ identical leopards, that is.

"It's time for your pedicure!" they cried in unison, perhaps indicating that they were the unnamed twins from before (determining for certain would be an NP-Hard class problem).

"Uh, you've never met me before," Po said, dumbfounded. "How can it be time for my pedicure?"

"Pedicure!" they insisted, pushing Po into a seat and placing his feet in a bucket of water. Conveniently, Song was seated in another chair immediately behind him, facing the opposite direction and also receiving a pedicure, because "girls are wacky" is apparently one of this show's morals.

"Oh, my feet are so sore," Song said, striking up a conversation in an unusual way. "We just got back from the Valley of Peace."

"Excuse me," Po said, oddly deciding to be polite for once even though the conversation had already been started and so this excusal was completely unnecessary. "How _was _the Valley of Peace?"

"Oh," Song said, sounding surprised that someone had asked her a question that directly pertained to her previous sentence—the sentence in which she had specifically made a point of indicating that she had been to the Valley of Peace. "It was…"

"Fun? Successful?" Po asked, completely dropping what little subtlety he had had. "Did you meet anyone there? Like, maybe someone who you became friends with and then decided to trick and deceive and make them feel bad after they gave you a butt shaped like a heart!?"

"Po?" Song asked, looking behind her curiously and showing intense intellect compared to everyone else in this series who seems to have a lot of trouble recognizing literally the only panda they know.

"No!" Po insisted lamely. "Who's Po?"

"Po!" Song exclaimed excitedly, once again demonstrating that her eyesight is much better than most in this show.

Panicked, Po fled the scene immediately, even though talking to Song had been the whole point of him heading over to her in the first place. He didn't make it far, however, before he ran into none other than blue shirt, who at least had a reason to be in the vicinity this time.

"Oh, Su!" Po exclaimed, pulling himself off of blue shirt, who he had fallen on. "Wow, it feels strange falling on someone besides Tigress for once."

"You know my name?" blue shirt asked, sounding more flattered than suspicious for some reason. Clearly she did not posses Song's level of basic brain function.

"Uh…who doesn't know of Su and her amazing parasol dancing?" Po asked rhetorically. "I'm…uh…Ming Ling Linga Ming Ling!" (Yes, he actually says that).

"Nice one," Craned whispered. "Also, while I normally hate it when people are oversensitive, I can't help but feel like that has to be racist somehow."

Shockingly, blue shirt looked unconvinced by this explanation, and a number of other leopards soon surrounded the drag-donning panda ominously. It is hard to say whether or not Song was among these leopards.

"I've, uh…come to dance for you!" Po exclaimed, figuring he didn't need a very impressive excuse given the success of his disguise.

"Wonderful!" blue shirt exclaimed, perhaps simply playing along or perhaps actually that stupid. "Go ahead!"

So, Po proceeded to dance and jive in a manner that looked almost as ridiculous as that time Shifu turned into a zombie. Despite this, however, the leopards seemed quite impressed with his performance, possibly because it just barely fell short of the quality of their own dance routines.

Satisfied that his audience was sufficiently distracted by his sporadic movements, Po made his way surreptitiously over to where the Dragon Chalice was being kept conveniently on display on a pedestal, right out in the open. When he arrived at his destination, however, he was greeted once again by blue shirt, who had apparently not actually been fooled by the panda's terrible disguise.

"I think I might know you from somewhere," she said, "_Dragon Warrior_!"

"Crane, Viper: Go!" Po called quickly, throwing his sidekicks from his back.

Wasting no time, Viper snatched up the chalice in her mouth as Crane grabbed her in his talons and took to the sky. Within a matter of seconds, they were out of sight, leaving Po to battle the disgruntled salesmen—I mean, dancing ladies—alone.

All at once, the leopards attacked the panda in unison, making it look bizarrely as though Po were fighting some sort of clone army—which, now that you mention it, may have been a more interesting premise than dancing ladies who also steal things. At least then it would have excused using the same model over and over again.

Po, of course, deflected his assailants' attacks flawlessly, because apparently he's basically a god in this series except when he's supposed to be learning some sort of lesson.

"We can't just leave him," Viper said, still caught in Crane's clutches as they soared through the air together.

"Of course we can," Crane said. "He's the main character of a kids' TV show. He'll be fine. Besides, by the next episode, none of us will even remember that this happened for some reason."

"You're right," Viper agreed. "We need to focus on getting the chalice out, especially since we seem to have only travelled about three feet so far."

Unbeknownst to them, however, the ladies were well aware of their plan as they launched an umbrella into the sky at the fleeing warriors. Apparently Crane flies quite slowly as said umbrella—being about as aerodynamic as you'd expect an umbrella to be—somehow managed to end up in front of him despite his immense head start. As it opened before them, Crane and Viper crashed into the umbrella's ribs, sending them plummeting towards the ground and crashing into Po, because why not?

Forcibly united again, the three warriors worked together to defeat the leopard ladies by letting Po continue to single-handedly fight all of them while Crane and Viper used their combined efforts to subdue exactly one.

"Where's the chalice?" Po asked, standing back-to-back with Crane now.

"Viper's got it!" Crane replied.

Po looked down to see that Viper had swallowed the entire chalice, creating a strange lump in the center of her body as she smiled innocently back at him.

"Okay, I admit that's actually kind of funny, if somewhat degrading." Po said before his expression faltered. "Uh, we're not going to have to get that out the uh…you know…_usual_ way, are we?"

"Unless you want to cut her open," Crane answered.

"Might be worth it," Po deadpanned.

Fortunately, this would not be necessary as yet another leopard—or perhaps one of the same ones from before—pulled at Viper's tail, somehow sending the chalice shooting back out of her mouth even though this is not how digestive tracts are supposed to work. After some more struggling, however, the snake master managed to retrieve the chalice again, prompting Po to turn urgently to Crane.

"You guys go," he said. "I'll handle them."

"We tried that before, remember?" Crane said.

"Just try again," Po insisted. "It'll work this time for some reason."

So, Crane and Viper once again took to the skies, this time flying at a more reasonable pace for a bird and managing to escape to safety. This left Po to…continue fighting the leopards single-handedly, just as he had been doing the whole time.

However, after a few more seconds of demolishing wave after wave of identical leopards—either due to a fast recovery rate or just a large number of leopards in the first place—Po suddenly found himself cornered somehow; but, just as things began to look grim, yet another leopard came dropping out of the sky (no, it is not explained how she managed to fall out of the sky conveniently, but at this point I've stopped asking questions).

"Song!" Po exclaimed, watching his Tigress stand-in beat back the leopards that had had him cornered. "You came back!"

"I heard you could use a friend," she said with a smile. "Also, I was always here."

"Heard from who?" Po asked earnestly.

"Uh…it's just a figure of speech," Song said. "I just meant that I realized that I value your friendship."

"Well that's a first for this series," Po mumbled unhappily.

Song proceeded to prove that she did, in fact, value her friend more than anyone else in this dumb TV show did by actually helping him out and fighting to protect him from her peers. Before long, she had managed to set Po free and clear a pathway for their escape together, which is another thing most people in this series can't seem to manage—you know, actual effective Kung Fu fighting.

As Po and Song made to flee the compound together, however, they were stopped by none other than blue shirt again, who had clearly invoked her uncanny ability to quite literally appear out of nowhere.

"Where do you think you're going?" she demanded.

"Well, you're evil," Po replied lamely, "so we're leaving!"

"You'll have to get through us first!" blue shirt said, now with forty or so other leopards behind her where none had been before.

"What are we going to do?" Song asked her friend worriedly. "We can't escape them if they can teleport like that!"

In answer Po simply cracked his neck before throwing Song unceremoniously over his shoulder and running through the huge crowd that had gathered before them. This proved to be extremely effective, bafflingly, as none of the ladies so much as blinked while their enemies bolted past. This also, coincidentally, marked the exact moment at which the show's writers entirely stopped trying.

So, free from the compound and with Song still needlessly slung over his shoulder, Po continued to run, the other leopards following in hot pursuit—a silly decision when they could obviously just apparate instead. Eventually, the two lovebirds found themselves entering a narrow canon, at which point Crane's shrill voice sounded from above.

"Po, catch!"

Po returned Song to her feet just in time to catch the Dragon Vase and watch Crane and Viper return to the ground next to him.

"What?" Po asked. "Why the hell are you giving this to me? You were supposed to take it back to the Jade Palace!"

"I didn't write the show!" Crane defended. "Also, why is this leopard guy with you?"

"No time to explain!" Po insisted. "Run!"

Just as it seemed that the persistent leopard people would chase the fleeing warriors to the ends of the earth, however, a strong wind blew through the canyon and caught under the ladies' umbrellas, sending them soaring into the sky. Yes, you read that correctly.

"Well, that was easy," Po said, stopping to watching the leopards sail through the air. "I guess the writers really _have_ given up."

"Uh, I don't mean to be a stick in the mud," Crane began, eyeing the travelling salesmen as they drifted further and further away, "but shouldn't we be arresting them? Or at least blue shirt lady?"

"Arresting people isn't our thing," Po said. "It's easier for the writers to use these characters again in the future if we never actually hand out any consequences."

* * *

"So," Po said, smiling at Song as they stood just outside the ladies' compound. "Now that this whole ordeal is over, how about you and I head back to the Valley of Peace?"

"I'd love to, Po," Song replied, "but I still don't actually have a place to stay there."

"That's okay!" Po persisted. "You can bunk with me! My bed's a little small, but I'm sure we can work something out!"

"I'm sorry, Po," Song apologized, shaking her head sadly, "but the same rules still apply to me. Keeping me around would require a lot of continuity work. I'm afraid I have to go."

"But…but!" Po stuttered, unable to fathom the possibility of more goat men in his future and dreading his return to the land of the cocky. "But I love you! Even though it sounds as though you've had three different voice actors throughout this episode, I don't care! You can't leave!"

"Po, we both know you don't really love me," Song said. "In fact, you didn't even seem to catch on that I was interested in you in that way until just now, even though I was pretty overtly infatuated with your ass earlier."

"I know, you're right," Po conceded. "I guess it was just nice to have someone in this show actually treat me like their friend for once—or even, you know…a person."

"Tigress is still there for you," Song reminded him. "If not in this show, at least in the movies and official shorts."

"But they're so few and far between!" Po lamented, sounding close to tears.

"There, there," Song said. "You'll be alright."

"Well, I guess I have something for you to remember me by then," Po said, handing her the same scroll she had presented to him back in the bamboo forest. "It's my butt."

"I know," Song said happily. "I will always treasure it."

After giving Po a quick peck on the cheek—which quite possibly marks the first show of physical affection beyond hugging that this series has ever dared to attempt—Song opened her umbrella and followed figuratively in her peers' footsteps as she too flew into the sky, never to be seen again.

"So when did Song turn into Mary Poppins?" Crane asked, ruining the moment but excusably so.

* * *

"We did it!" Po exclaimed, bursting into the Hall of Heroes where Tigress and Monkey were still cleaning up for some reason. In particular, Tigress was sweeping the floor, which distracted Po. "Uh, you know we have servants for that kind of stuff, right?"

"Yeah, did it really take you guys this whole time just to pick stuff up off the ground?" Viper asked incredulously. "I mean, it's changed from day to night to day again."

"I'm just as confused as you are," Tigress said, eyeing the broom in her hand. "Plus, Mantis has gone missing."

"Well, anyway," Po continued, "we got the Dragon Chalice back!"

He proceeded to carefully place the vase—I mean, chalice—on its rightful pedestal. Of course, by "rightful" I actually mean a completely different one to the pedestal it had originally occupied, which is just as well seeing as it hadn't existed before this episode anyway. Just as he did so, Shifu's voice sounded behind him.

"Po," the red panda called. "Have you seen the Dragon Chalice? I have a ceremony coming up."

"Woah!" Po exclaimed, understandably perturbed by Shifu's abrupt return. "I can't decide whether your sudden appearance, the awfully convenient timing of your return, the implausible coincidence that you need the exact thing we just got back now for something, or the missing explanation of what kind of ceremony requires a special vase is the most confusing part of that last sentence."

"Nevermind that," Shifu dismissed, wanting his small part in this episode over with as soon as possible. "Do you have the chalice?"

"Got it right here," Po answered, proudly handing the vase to Shifu.

"Uh, is that lip stick?" Shifu asked, scrutinizing the relic.

"Lipstick?" Po asked. "I'm pretty sure that didn't exist in ancient China, Shifu, so I'm going to have to say no."

"Well, there's some kind of makeup on this," Shifu persisted.

"I don't know…" Po said drawled. "Only girls use makeup, and there are none of those here."

Shifu looked confused by this.

"Uh, while it's true that neither Viper nor Tigress wear makeup of any kind," he admitted, "I'm not sure I understand what the writers were thinking when they came up with that line."

"Beats me," Po said. "They seem to have completely missed the fact that no one in the movies ever makes a big deal about Viper and Tigress being female—in fact, no one seems to mention anyone's gender at all in the movies."

"I much preferred it that way," Tigress sighed, remembering all of the times characters in this show referred to her as a man.

"Well, we could go on about all ways the movies are far superior to this crappy show all day," Shifu reminded them. "But, as I said, I have a ceremony to attend and I think it's time you all got some rest. Also, someone should probably find out where Mantis has gone."

With that, Po, the Furious Five, and their elderly master retired for the night, relieved that they had survived yet another substandard episode.

* * *

Po and Tigress sat on the floor of her room, playing cards together to pass the time until the next episode.

"So," Po asked as usual, "what did you think?"

"Hard to say," Tigress replied. "I wasn't exactly involved in much today."

"Yeah, you really missed out," Po agreed. "I was humble, and nice, and I even apologized sometimes when I punched Song in the face!"

"How often did you punch her in the face?" Tigress asked neutrally.

"Probably not as many times as you would've liked," Po answered shrewdly.

"Look, I'll admit that she was a huge improvement over the goat girl," Tigress conceded. "But still, the only thing you guys had in common was your love of heart-shaped butts."

"Well maybe if _you_ learned to appreciate my butt every now and then the writers would finally put us together," Po rebutted pointedly.

"I don't know if I'd really say you two were ever together," Tigress said skeptically. "I mean, Song was pretty obvious with her blushing and her obsession with your ass, but you didn't seem to realize it at all."

"True," Po conceded. "I think the writers couldn't quite decide whether their urge to pair me with a random character was stronger than their desire to make me look like an idiot, so they went somewhere in between."

"I don't know," Tigress teased. "I think the drag outfit fell quite squarely on the idiot side of things."

"Oh come on," Po countered. "You're just upset that you didn't get to come with me today."

"I think it's self-evident that things would've been more interesting if I had been there," Tigress maintained. "Partially because that's true in general and partially because I would've had the opportunity to use my uncharacteristic jealousy for good for once."

"Yeah, I'm a bit surprised the writers passed up that opportunity," Po agreed. "I mean, they _love_ having you act jealous. Taking you with me to confront Song would've been a goldmine for that, even if it would've been out-of-character for you."

"Well, at least you got to have someone be nice to you for once," Tigress admitted. "I mean, I wouldn't know what that's like in this show because I just have things fall on me in between being ignored, easily defeated, and beaten up by my best friend, but I'm happy for you."

"Look, I think we can all agree that having the writers actually respect our characters and the relationship they share together in the movies would've been the ideal outcome," Po said. "But, since that's never going to happen, I think having me actually be relatively likeable for one episode was pretty nice. Besides, Song was positively adorable compared to the goat girl—and I mean that in every possible sense of the word."

"I'll conceded that she was fairly tolerable," Tigress agreed, "and even the friendship you two developed was almost heart-warming by this show's usual standards."

"But you still want to punch her face in?" Po asked.

"Over and over again until it turns to mush and the animators have to make another clone of the base leopard model," Tigress confirmed. "I mean, why should she get so much screen time when I'm already here? Do you know how many people watch this show just hoping that I'll actually get a significant role in the next episode?"

"Let's not go down that rabbit hole," Po pleaded. "We could be here for hours and this parody has already overstayed its welcome."

"Okay," Tigress sighed. "Well, since the writers are clearly never going partner us together again—or even give me more than two, extremely mean lines per episode from now on—I suppose you're going to miss having Song around?"

"I'll miss having a friend in this series," Po said. "All of my other so-called friends seem unable to stand being near me: You, Crane, Mantis, Viper, Monkey…even Shifu and my own dad seem to hate me."

"But will you _miss_ her?" Tigress repeated emphatically, watching Po's expression carefully.

"Frankly, I just liked the friendship," Po confessed, giving Tigress some relief. "I mean, she's nice and all, but I don't think enough really happened between us to warrant anything more—except, of course, for that last kiss, which I still don't think is enough to sway me."

"Kiss?" Tigress asked. "What kiss? Kisses don't happen in this show!"

"They do now, apparently," Po said. "Song kissed me right before she left. Seemed a bit unnecessary, but whatever, right?"

Tigress stared off into the distance for a moment, her eyes unfocused.

"I have to go," she said suddenly, standing up.

"Tigress, don't!" Po pleaded. "It's not in your character to take petty revenge like that— and, given your track record in this show, she'd probably beat you up."

"Oh, I'm not going to do anything," Tigress assured him in a mischievous voice. "But I might just let it slip to movie Tigress that someone laid their lips on her best friend."

"Tigress, you're not making sense," Po informed her. "If you and movie Tigress are different people—which makes sense—then so am I and movie Po, so there's really no reason for her to be upset."

"You're right," Tigress admitted, nodding while still staring off into the distance. "And she wouldn't take revenge, anyway, so I guess I'll just have to kill that bitch myself."

"You know, I didn't get this angry when you had that whole shrimpgasm thing," Po pointed out.

"Please don't call it that," Tigress said, her face one of disgust. "And he never kissed me."

"Tigress, it isn't worth it," Po told her, standing up and putting his hand on her shoulder. "You know she could never replace you. You're much hotter."

"How do I know that?" Tigress demanded. "Everyone in this series seems to think I'm a dude!"

Po realized he was fighting a losing battle and so decided not to respond. Instead, he simply pressed his lips against hers, pulling her in close and holding her tight for a moment. In response, Tigress seemed to freeze beneath his grip, only just coming to terms with what was happening when he finally let go.

"Now do you believe me?" Po asked, pulling back and smiling—not cockily this time, if you can imagine it.

Tigress grinned appreciatively after a few moments of blissful silence, her eyes finally regaining focus.

"I like these parodies," she said cheerfully. "We get to do fun things that we wouldn't normally be able to do."

"I couldn't agree more," Po replied. "What do you want to do next?"

"What do you say we go fishing?" Tigress proposed. "I'll eat anything we catch. _Anything_."

"I like where you're going with this," Po said, thinking of more than one seafood item he'd like to see mercilessly devoured.

And with that, the two warriors strode hand-in-hand towards the eastern shore, content and worry-free—at least, until the next episode comes out.


End file.
